Brave New World
by FMJ-Author
Summary: It's the standard dead apocalypse and how someone, in this case the highschool slacker Mark and his friend survive it. (Bad summary) R
1. Chapter 1 Big changes, indeed

Brave New World

Chapter One

It was a beautiful day, the sun shone and the grass seemed to be a little greener than the day before. Like any other day in Rockport California. However, there was a thing that was quite different from all other day's until this day. The world as we knew it was about to go to hell within a matter of hours and nobody knew a goddamn thing about it. One of the whole six billion people who soon would be affected by the catastrophe was Mark. He was on his way from school with his two best buds, Alec and Stan. School on the other hand would end in about four hours. Mark was lazy, no doubt about that. He skipped school almost every day, a thing that in turn didn't give him to good grades. Mark was a very obstinate person and if he didn't want to go to school he simply didn't. It wasn't that he was dumb or something, he was quite intelligent according to teachers, but he wasn't interested in school a bit. He just disliked school. To him school was a place meant only for jocks who wanted to play sports with each other and look down on anyone who didn't do so themselves and geeks who (how weird it might sound to any rational human being) liked school.

His trustworthy friends were equal slackers, maybe not as lazy as Mark, but most certainly lazy. The gang of fellow slackers mostly hung out and slacked on their spare time (and considering that they skipped school almost every day the didn't lack spare time in any way). This day they were headed to Alec's house because his parents weren't coming home for a couple of hours. The trio walked down one of the quiet streets of Rockport CA and discussed whether Linda Romero in their class was as hot as Alec thought or if she was the standard hottie that Stan and Mark thought.

"I think she's quite a hottie." Alec said.

"Sure, but not that hot." Stan said.

"You think Kyle works today?" Mark interrupted his friends discussion when the group walked past one of the many seven eleven's in Rockport. Kyle was Stan's brother and a friend to the three slackers. He currently worked in the seven eleven they were looking. He constantly complained about how low his pay was and let the guys shoplift any time they wanted as a revenge on his boss.

"I think he works at Wednesdays." Stan said. "But I'm not sure, still worth a try though. Would be nice with some nachos."

The friends closed in on the 7-11 when two police cars roared down the street followed by an ambulance, all three with their sirens wailing. Strange, nothing happens in this dump of a town, Mark thought as the vehicles roared down the street and their sirens echoed at the houses. They stood and watched as the cars drove down the street and how the sirens died away. Then they entered the shop. The electric doors went bee-boop. They didn't see Kyle anywhere. The clerk usually sat behind the counter and read comics, but now he was nowhere to be seen. Alec and Stan started to discuss what they wanted to get while Mark walked up to the counter and peeked into the back room. In there he saw the tall and slim blonde figure that was Kyle. He looked almost exactly as his brother, only taller. He seemed to be spellbound by the television and hadn't even noticed the three customers.

"What's more important than sitting behind the counter and reading comics?" Mark asked.

Kyle almost jumped out of the chair he was sitting in when he heard Mark's voice. He calmed down a bit when he saw that it was Mark but he still looked scared and pale.

"There's some bad shit going on." He said. "Come check it out."

Mark stepped closer and remembered the first time he'd seen the broadcasts at 9-11. It couldn't be that bad, but if it was big enough to scare Kyle, it had to be big. It was bigger. Mark walked into the small room and looked at the television. CNN was showing pictures of what seemed to be riots or something. It was filmed from a chopper and on people down on the street looked like little ants. They zoomed in. Down on the street a mob of people charged a group of police officers in riot gear. The cameraman had zoomed in so close that Mark could see the faces of the people that ran at the riot police. All wore tattered clothing that seemed to be soaked in blood. Something strange was going on. The mob slammed into the wall of riot shields and the people in the front line were pressed forward by the people behind them. They broke through the line of shields and engaged the police in hand to hand combat. The police were outnumbered ten to one and the mob got the upper hand in the fight. The battle raged as the screen turned into the usual calm newsreader, a young blonde woman. The thing that was different was that this woman didn't seem calm at all. She looked scared and stressed and kept looking at the papers she was holding in her hands.

"This is live pictures directly from Washington D.C. As an update on the situation we are now getting reports of that tells says that the people committing these horrible crimes seem to be in a trance of some kind. So we advice you once again to keep your doors and windows locked and not to trust strangers."

This was unbelievable! Mark couldn't believe what he saw. Shit like this didn't happen. It had to be some kind of joke.

"Are they fucking kidding?" he asked Kyle who was locked on the screen.

"Nah, they've been broadcasting this shit all day. I think it's real." He turned to the television again.

"Alec! Stan!" Mark screamed. Alec showed up first, then Stan.

"Whadda you want?" they asked almost simultaneously.

"Take a look at this guys." Kyle told them.

There was a new live feed from another scene in another town. This time the cameraman was down on the street and surrounded by policemen and a couple of soldiers who seemed to be shooting at an oncoming horde. The camera turned and showed a middle aged reported Standing behind the soldiers holding a microphone.

"This is live from Houston, one of the cities were the riots have broken out. The national guard has been called in but are to scattered to do anything else than to aid the police in the fight against the felons. The mobs of rioting men and women are rampaging through the whole city and no one is safe, they kill everyone, the ones that resist as well as innocent bystanders. Martial law has been declared by the mayor and there is total anarchy here."

The reporter stopped and looked at the soldiers direction. Soldiers started to run away from the throng of people that charged at them, seeing that there was nothing they could do to stop the wave of frenzied people.

"Run!" The cameraman screamed and started to flee with the rest of the soldiers. The reporter started to run as well as the rest of the police and military. The camera shook like in Blair Witch Project and the only thing one could hear was screams from the fleeing soldiers, the clapping of feet and scattered gunfire as some of the soldiers stopped and fired a couple of rounds at the mob before pulling back. The cameraman turned around to get a picture of the oncoming horde. They were really close now, thirty feet. It looked like normal people, young, old, black, white, all kinds of people. The strange thing was that they seemed to be in some kind of frenzied trance. Then the cameraman turned around to run, but tripped on something and dropped the camera. The camera stayed on but the cameraman didn't care about it, he got up and started to run when one of the troublemaker reached him. The cameraman was knocked down while the rest of the mob ran past him. Then something unbelievable happened. Even with all the crazy things happening this thing was weird. The four friends as well as all the other people who watched CNN watched as the cameraman was devoured by the criminals. At least ten of the creatures, they were sure they weren't human, ripped the man into pieces and ate parts of him. Kyle threw up and the others felt like if they were next to empty their stomachs.

"We're getting reports that these things are happening everywhere." The newsreader started. "In the big cities as well as in rural areas. We are also getting reports from people who say that they've seen these people eat their victims, others say that they have noticed that some of the killers have got severe wounds on them." The woman stopped for a couple of seconds. "We are trying to contact the Pentagon and we will get back to you as soon as we know anything new. And once again we advice you to stay indoors and not to trust strangers. We break for commercials."

The commercials started and Mark and the others got a little time to think. The things they just witnessed was disgusting, horrific and alarming. There was at least a hundred other words to describe what they'd just seen and none of them were good. Mark was on the brink to panic, Kyle seemed to be in shock and Alec and Stan seemed to be both.

"What the fuck is going on?" Stan asked. "This can't be real."

"I think it is." His brother answered. "They've been showing this shit all day and it seems to be everywhere."

"These things don't happen in real life." Stan said. His eyes were empty as he stared into the wall.

"What the fuck do we do?" Mark asked. He was scared shitless and couldn't think about anything except what he had seen a minute ago.

The didn't decide what to do, they were interrupted. The seven eleven's door went Bee-boop.

"Wait here and check the news while I go tell them that we're closed." Kyle said and stood up. The commercials hadn't stopped yet and the three friends were to shocked to talk.

"Hey guys, we're closed today. Go home and check the news." Kyle said to the new customer.

"We know about it. Why don't you go home to your family and let us take what we need?" Another male voice answered.

"I don't think..." Kyle started. Something made him stop in the middle of a sentence. "Ok, take what you want."

Mark became curious about what was happening and peaked out to check out what was happening.

Two men, an Afro-American with sunglasses and a shaved head and a white man that looked like if he'd been on the wrong side of the law his whole life, stood at the entrance. The white man had a revolver trained on Kyle who stood with his hands behind his neck. The black man was gathering some food into a blue duffel bag. The white man noticed Mark and aimed his gun at him. A chill went through Mark as the weapon was pointed at him.

"Get over here kid." The man said calmly.

Mark did as he was told and walked over to Kyle. The man kept his gun trained at Mark the whole time. Guns made Mark uncomfortable, even if the man didn't intend to shot he could slip and kill Mark by mistake. The man wore a pair of urban-camo pants and a white vest that showed the tattoos that covered the mans arms. Dragons, naked women and eagles. He kept the gun trained at Kyle and Mark but turned around to see what his friend was doing.

The black man seemed to be done with shuffling food, which was more like chips and crackers, into the duffel bag.

"You done?" The white man asked. The black man nodded as an answer.

"Thanks for the supplies guys." He looked at Kyle and Mark. "I can tell you that the shit has hit the fan here to. There are uglies running around downtown. And to break the bubble for you, they aren't human. No way. We ran across one on our way here, and it wasn't human. I emptied five bullets into it and it kept coming. But when I got it in the head it dropped dead. So take this advice, shot them in the head and they seem to go down."

"Gotta blaze Jimmy!" The black man shouted.

The two robbers ran out the Bee-booping electric door and out into the parking place. The day only got weirder. Mark and Kyle stood there and waited for Alec and Stan to get out and join them in silence. The four friends only stood there, no one said anything. They could feel it, the world was changing. It was as if there was a certain smell they hadn't encountered before, or maybe it was the air that was different in some way. But nothing was going to be like it had been half an hour ago when the world was simple and danger wasn't more than being caught skipping school.

Then the bang of a gun crushed the almost poetical moment. Then there was a brief silence. Then the electrical door went Bee-boop. The two robbers ran into the seven eleven again. Both men looked at Alec and Stan. Then the white man, who seemed to be the talkative one, turned to the whole group. He looked scared.

"They're outside. Four of them." He said.


	2. Well, Shit happens

Authors note: I know it's been a long time since the last post but school has been really intense.

Chapter two

Before anything else could happen the electric door shattered in a blizzard of tiny pieces of glass when a strong fist was slammed against it. Everyone looked at the door and saw the figure standing there. At any normal occasion it would have been one of those people one saw and never remembered. It was a man wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, at least it had been. But on this one the t-shirt was splashed with blood and more red than white. His throat was wide open in a gruesome wound. Then Mark remembered something from all those movies he had watched through the years. _Zombie._ That thing wasn't a man anymore, it was a zombie. The zombie charged the closest man, which happened to be the white robber. With incredible speed the robber swung around and faced the zombie and fired the remaining shots into the monsters torso. It stopped the thing from coming any closer and made it stumble backwards, but it didn't kill it. The black man suddenly held a pistol in his hands and with a marksmans aim he fired a single bullet into the creatures forehead. Blood and brains showered the shelves behind it. The zombie stopped, fell to it's knees and then to the floor. It didn't get up again. But before anyone could think about what had happened two more corpses stormed in through the broken door. They looked like if they had belonged to the group of homeless people in Rockport. Both had wounds as horrible as the last one. The white robber knew he was out of ammo and started to run from the zombies. The two new corpses moaned and charged the black man who held his gun in both hands and calmly aimed at the closest zombie while slowly paced backwards. The seven eleven wasn't big and the corpses didn't have to run more than three meters to catch up with the black man. His first shot hit the closest hobo zombie in the shoulder and made it stagger to the left and smash into a rack of magazines. Both the rack and the zombie fell to the floor.

Then the man fired five shots in a row. The guns recoil made his aim a little worse and only two shots hit the second creature in the throat and severed it's head, which killed it. Or at least made the body stop moving, the head rolled away and it's eyes were locked on the black man. The first zombie started to crawl at the man. The man lowered his pistol and kept it trained at the crawling zombie and when it came real close he put the gun to the zombies temple and pulled the trigger. _Click_. He pulled the trigger again. _Click_. The zombie bit down hard at the man's leg, it's jaws went through the jeans and into his flesh. The man screamed and threw himself backwards while the white man stepped forward and ended the creatures misery with a shot from his revolver.

"You need to be carefull Morgan." The white man told his friend in a most educating tone.

Morgan grunted something and slid a new clip into the gun. Then he ripped a piece of cloth from his T-shirt and used it as home-made bandage. The white man turned to the four young men.

"You coming?" he asked. "It would be cruel to leave you four here to be eaten. Our car is out there."

Mark didn't know what to say and turned to his friends with a questioning look. They would be dead if they faced a zombie without a weapon, and these guys had guns and knew how to use them. For the moment it seemed wisest to team up with the two robbers. They didn't have to say a word to each other, they all knew what that the others thought something similar.

"We're coming." Mark answered the robber.

Mark and his friends introduced themselves and the group left the scene looking like a battlefield. When they got out they encountered the last zombie, but at that range he wasn't a problem at all. What they saw from the parking lot was ten times worse. Thick black smoke rose from somewhere to the left. Down the street which the three friends had come from a truck had crashed into a car and tipped over. Clusters of zombies were roaming in the streets and the sounds of sirens, screams and gunshots made a soundtrack of death in the background. The end was really fucking nigh. A humvee was parked close to the seven eleven's entrance. Then some of the zombies noticed them. All six of them hurried to the humvee and got in it without the cluster of zombies getting to close. But when the engine started it was as if every undead in the whole city reacted. They came pouring out from houses and from streets to heed their unstoppable hunger. It was Morgan who drove. The undead didn't even try to get out of the way and without mercy he ran them over. Mark couldn't think, every thought was interrupted by another one. Alec and Stan seemed to be in the same state of mind as himself. Stan looked straight forward and didn't say anything. Alec had his face burrowed in his hands and looked down. Kyle was shaking and looking at a city that seemed totally alien to him. Scenes like those on the TV was everywhere. The white man turned around and looked at the four friends in the back seat.

"I'm Jimmy and my friend here is Morgan. What do you guys know about this shit?" He started.

"Nothing more than that it's everywhere." Mark answered. "What do you know?"

"That it's some really bad shit. We were waking up from one hell of a party and saw that some bad shit was happening on the TV. We decided to go stock up on some supplies, canned food and that kind of shit. But on our way we saw the real thing. People being eaten by other people, the chaos. So we decided to get our supplies and leave the city. Which we are doing right now." He sighed and looked older than he had looked before. Something was fishy, most people weren't packing heat when they went to parties. When Mark looked at the men they seemed more like professional criminals then party people.

"There's a squad car over there. They might have one of those 12 gauges and stuff." Morgan told Jimmy and pointed at a crashed police car. It looked as if the police car had crashed into the SUV ten meters in front of it. The police car had blood all over it's inside.

Morgan stopped the car and looked around at the street. No ghouls were to be seen on this street, but the ones that had followed them were on their tail.

"I'll go check it out. You coming Morg?" Jimmy asked.

"Nah. My leg doesn't feel to good." Morgan answered.

"Someone want to come?" Jimmy said and looked at the people in the back seat.

"I'll go." Mark volunteered. Morgan handed Mark his gun and instructed him in some of the basics.

The two of them exited the car and closed in on the car. When they came closer they heard moaning and sobs coming from the other side of the car. And swearing. Jimmy tapped Mark on the shoulder and made a hand signal to him that said that they should go around the car and check were the noise came from. The split up and closed in on the sobbing object from two sides. A crouched figure in police uniform sat with a shotgun in one hand and a handgun in the other. It was a woman, maybe in her early thirties. As soon as she noticed Mark and Jimmy she aimed her weapons at them. After a second or two she realised that the two people aiming guns at her wasn't zombies, she slowly lowered the guns. Mark noticed a corpse in uniform inside the car. The top of its head was missing. Mark and Jimmy stood and looked at the scene for a moment until the woman broke the silence.

"You gonna help me before the dead fucks coming back?" She asked Jimmy. "My leg is kind of bad since my late partner bit me." She pointed at the corpse with the pistol.

Mark could hear the sounds of the horde of dead behind them now. Jimmy walked up to the policewoman and grabbed her shotgun and threw it at Mark who caught it by reflex.

"Check the car for something useful." Jimmy ordered Mark.

While Jimmy helped the woman up and let her lean against him as they made their way to the humvee Mark slowly opened the door. The smell of blood almost made him throw up, but he leaned forward and reached for the holstered gun the corpse wore. He tried to be as quick as he could when he grabbed the gun and the extra clips. Then he saw a box of shotgun shells and grabbed them to. Then he hurried to the car were everybody was waiting. When everyone was inside the car Mark and they were on their way Mark turned around and saw the that that the zombies behind them were close now, only twenty meters behind. But as Morgan sped up they lost their pursuers in a couple of narrow turns.

"I'm Jenny if anyone wanted to know." The policewoman said. The others introduced themselves and told Jenny their story.

"What do you know about this crisis?" Jimmy asked her when the story was told.

"It started this morning. Reports on murders flooded the station. The things happened everywhere and soon there weren't enough cops to cover all the reports. We, me and Jason, were downtown when we saw the first of these things. A group of them were chasing down a normal guy and we saw them from our car. We tried to stop them but only got their attention. They didn't care about that our guns were trained on them and that we shouted to them to hold it. Jason shot one of them when it got to close. It didn't have any affect at all."

"We know, you have to shot them in the head." Jimmy interrupted.

"I know that now, but back then we didn't. Jason shot him again. It didn't stop it either, the creature bit him but he pushed it away and pressed his gun against its temple and fired. Then it died. But the others were close to and we retreated to our car. More of them joined up and we figured it would be best to get back to the station before we did anything else. But on our way we hit that SUV you saw back there and the next thing I know is that I wake up and Jason is chewing on my thigh. I shot him in the head and crawled out of the wreck and sat there until you came along. The leg hurts as hell, do you have any first aid kits in here?"

"No we don't. Just so you know we are getting out of the town. Are you coming with us or should we drop you of here?" Morgan answered in a very sarcastic tone.

"I'll tag along with you, if it's as bad as you say we better hurry." Jenny answered.

They spent the rest of the journey in silence, all remembering the horrors that they had witnessed in the last hours. Soon a sign told them that _You're leaving Rockport, we'll miss you!_ Mark felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. _I might survive another day of this mess_, he thought as he looked at the beautiful Californian scenery. Everyone else was silent, except for Jenny who swore a little as she bandaged her wound with the same kind of makeshift bandages as Morgan.

After a while Morgan pulled over at one of those stops that swarmed the country. It was a little building, a small shop and a even smaller restaurant serving the usual hamburgers and stuff. There were no car at the parking lot and the whole place seemed deserted.

Everyone got out of the car. Morgan's leg was worse and he leaned at Jimmy. Jenny leaned against Kyle. When they got closer they saw that there was a note on the door.

_I guess you know about what's happening._

_I figured it would be nicer to spend my _

_last hours with my family. Take what you_

_want from here The end is nigh._

_-Vic _

The door was unlocked. When they entered they saw that the TV and radio was on. Vic seemed to have left in a hurry. Everyone sat down and watched the TV for a while. The situation had become worse since last time they checked. All major cities was down, the military couldn't do jack shit about anything since they were scattered, martial law had been declared throughout the whole country and CNN was going to shut down within a couple of hours and let an emergency broadcast take over. They saw a few live feeds from different places. One of them looked like that scene in Resident Evil 2 were all the cops are surrounded and shots at zombies everywhere, Mark thought. Another was from a helicopter and showed Broadway. Thousands of the creatures were down there. It looked as if the ground was moving. Then they raided the small shop for something to eat. What they took weren't directly the best food, but Coca-Cola and candy bars filled their stomachs for the moment. They talked when they ate, about what had happened and what they were going to do. Everyone tried to call their families from the phone at the disk, but they lines seemed to be out.

"What the hell do we do now?" Mark asked no one in specific.

"I think we should stay here for a day or two, we've got everything we need here. Food, water and shelter. If we stay here for some time we might see if the military cleans this up and then we can all return to normal." Joe answered. "Besides, Morgan's and Jenny's wounds doesn't look to good."

He was right in everything he said. It seemed best to stay here and check out what happened for a day or two while the wounded were treated. Their medical supplies weren't to good though, they had found a first aid kit in the shop but that was about it. And both Morgan and Jenny seemed to get worse.

"You're right." Stan agreed. Alec and Kyle grunted something that sounded like yes.

The day proceeded and everyone tried to do as much as possible. Morgan and Jenny weren't to mobile and therefore invented their armoury which was made up by Morgan's automatic (a colt .45), Jimmy's revolver (a .38), Jenny's and Jason's guns (both glock 17) and the 12 gauge shotgun. The others searched the one story building for anything that could come to use. They found some sharp knives in the kitchen, some non-perishable food in the shop and some other things of necessity like a road map and some basic hiking gear. They gathered everything on two tables in the middle of the room. Then they turned to the TV again just in time to see that CNN shut down and the emergency broadcast take over. The newscaster was a young woman that looked stressed. She reported the situation to everyone. _As if anyone hasn't realised that there's zombies running around, _Mark thought. The situation itself seemed to be as before. The zombies were everywhere, nobody could do anything about it and the world was going to end. The usual.

Later on, in the evening, Jenny passed out. She had a fever and was getting worse. None of the men knew what to do and couldn't do anything else than to watch and hope for the best.

After a while Jenny stopped shaking from the fever. She lay still on the improvised bed they had made. No one did anything for a minute, they only looked at Jenny as if she was going to wake up and be alright. Then Stan leaned forward to check her pulse. He didn't seem to find the pulse anywhere and put his hand an inch over her mouth to check for breath. After a while he turned to the others and said:

"She's not breathing."

Then something unexpected happened. Jenny opened her eyes and locked them on Stan's hand. Then she bit hard. The skin on Stan's hand was ripped away as zombie-Jenny took a bite of his hand. He jumped away from the zombie and screamed in pain as blood sprayed from his palm and severed pinkie finger. He started to crab walk away from her.

"Get away from it." Jimmy shouted and ran for the guns.

Kyle showed a hidden skill for acrobatics as he dove down behind a table. Mark and Alec ran into the kitchen and hid there. Zombie-Jenny realised that Stan was to far away to concentrate on and that there was easier prey. She lunged at Morgan who sat next to her. Everything happened in a second and Morgan's eyes hadn't sent the information of Jenny biting Stan's hand to his cerebral-cortex yet. She got on top of the bigger man and when they wrestled it almost looked as if they were making out or something, Mark thought as he looked at the brawling from the window in the door. Then Jenny leaned down at Morgan's face as if she was going to kiss him, but instead of giving Morgan a kiss she bit down in his lower lip and ripped it off. Morgan screamed in pain and tried to push her away, but the zombie was to strong. Then the zombie bit down again, into Moorage's throat.

He tried to scream but the wound to his throat made his scream became a hissing. Blood flowed into his throat and choked him. When the zombie realised that Morgan was dead it started to search for a new prey, which happened to be Jimmy. By this time Jimmy had almost reached the duffel bag with the guns in it. He reached down and grabbed his revolver and swung around to meet the zombie coming at him. Jenny's forehead was two inches from the barrel of the revolver when he pulled the trigger. Her head resolved into a cloud of brains and bone that sprayed the wall behind her. Then everything went silent for a moment.

"Stay here, I'll go check what's happening." Mark told Alec.

He peeked through the window so that the zombie really was dead, he saw Jimmy standing over Jenny's corpse with his revolver. Then Morgan started to move. He stood up and lunged at Kyle who still was hiding behind the table. Mark didn't see anything because everything happened behind the table, but he heard Kyle scream in pain and then become silent. Then zombie-Morgan stood up as a proof of what had happened. Jimmy aimed his gun at him, but he didn't shot.

"Morgan, can you hear me?" He asked the zombie. "Buddy?"

The only thing that happened was that he got the zombies attention.

"I don't know if you can hear me, but if you don't stop I'll shot you!" He screamed as the zombie started to run at him.

He never shot. To Jimmy it still was his friend he was aiming at, to the zombie it was another victim. The zombie-Morgan bit Jimmy in the shoulder and by reflex he pulled the trigger. The shot was way off and impacted into a bag of chips. The zombie bit again, and again. The pair tumbled to the floor and the zombie kept gnawing and ripping in what once had been his friend. Then Kyle stood up from behind the table and looked at Stan. Stan was on the ground and when zombie-Kyle charged him he only put up his bloody hands as a try to stop the creature that once had been his brother. Mark realised that if he was going to survive he needed the guns. He ran across the room and dodged as zombie-Morgan lashed out at him on top of the dead Jimmy. He grabbed the bag with the guns in it and slung the shotgun over his shoulder and ran back to Alec in the kitchen. Then he realised that he hadn't taken any food and no hiking stuff. But it was to late to change now. He grabbed Alec and tried to drag him to the kitchens fire exit.

"What about the others?" Alec said with tears in his eyes.

"They're dead." Mark answered and sounded as emotionless as a machine.

Mark kicked the door open. The night air was cool and damp. The two friends ran.

Cliffhanger, again. This time it's not going to take as long as last time. And if Ahharu reads this I have to say something, UPDATE GODDAMN YOU! That goes for SubOrbital to.


	3. Bummer

Authors note: It's been a while, but it's here. I had this chapter finished before christmas but the USB disc I had written it on went psycho and formated itself. I've been busy celebrating certain holidays and so on so there hasn't been much writing, untill yesterday. Anyone who can guess where the names on three of the new characters are from gets a lollypop.

Chapter three: Bummer

The two boys ran as fast as they could for as long as they could. But none of them were in good shape and they stopped after a mile when their lungs felt like if they were going to explode. There they decided to stop and wait to see if the zombies had followed them or not. They hid and waited. They waited in an hour before they realized that the zombies probably weren't coming after them at all. But in the almost total darkness of the night every little sound and every shape might have been a zombie. Both Mark and Alec were scared shitless. They sat there, thirty feet away from the road and leaned against each others backs. Mark had the shotgun and Alec with the two glocks. Before everyone died Jimmy had showed them the basics of using the guns. Both of them felt a lot more confident with the guns now when they knew if the safety was on or off.

"Do you think we should keep moving or stay here?" Mark asked his friend.

"Don't know, don't care. We're as good as dead anyway." Alec answered in a very, very depressed tone.

"No we're not. At least I'm not going to get eaten by some dead fuck. Do you?" Mark snapped back.

"Do you really think you're going to survive one more day in this mess?" Alec asked and almost started to laugh, he didn't think so. "Everyone else is dead, so what does it matter if we die."

"I don't know if I'm going to die tomorrow or the day after that, but at least I'm going to try to survive for as long as possible. If you don't think so I don't really get the way you're thinking. Why don't you just lie down and die?" Mark said. "Let's get some sleep and then we keep on moving tomorrow. I'll take first shift."

"Ok, I would fall asleep if I took the first shift anyway." Alec answered and put the two glocks in the bag with all the other weapons. Even if the ground was hard and that every sound might have been an assulting zombie he fell asleep fast.

Mark never needed much sleep at all. He could sleep nine hours and stay up for forty eight, if he wanted to. But if he felt for sleeping he could sleep really long too. As he sat in the night and scanned for any kind of enemy he started to think about how crazy this day had been. First he'd seen the end of the world as we know it, then the robbers, the zombies and driving through the dying Rockport, then they had been safe for a while before Jenny and Morgan had died and returned. He had actually seen two of his best friends get killed. That hurt a little. Knowing that he would never see any of them again. At least he was alive, that was what mattered. Then he thought about what might have happened to his family. He knew that they probably were dead, and that was really bad too. Then he changed the subject into thinking of how all those people he had known and really didn't like were dead. That made him smile for himself in the darkness.

After imagining how Mr. Harrison, his math teacher, probably got eaten he swore an oath to himself. _I will do anything to survive for as long as possible. I am not going to end up as one of those soulless fucks,_ he thought over and over in his head. He sat all night and thought while nothing threatening happened around him. But when the sun rose over the horizon it was as if Marks biological clock told him that he had been awake for to long, which he actually had. In a few minutes he turned from awake and alert to exausted and almost asleep. He only closed his eyes to rest a little. And fell asleep.

The next thing he knew was that Alec was tapping him on his shoulder. He reacted without thinking and grabbed the shotgun and almost slammed its barrel into Alecs torso before he realized who the figure in front of him was.

"Fuck man! You scared the crap out of me. I thought I was going to die." He almost screamed.

"We would have if one of the zombies found us. You didn't wake me up. You should have." Alec said.

Mark grunted something and realized how hungry he was. None of the boys had eaten anything classified as real food since their breakfast yesterday. The sun was up now, the clock was at least past eight. Mark got up on his feet and slung the shotgun over his shoulder. Alec got up after him and reached down into the duffel bag and retrived one of the glocks which he put in his pants, what he later on learnt was called a mexican. Then he slung the bag over his shoulder.

"What do we do know?" Alec asked.

"I dunno. I thought about going back to the roadstop resturant and get the car. What do you think about that?" Mark said.

"Isn't that a little dangerous?" Alec asked. "It's at least four zombies in there."

"But we need the car and the food. And it would be nice knowing that Stan and Kyle are dead and not up and moving around. And we're packing some really mean heat in that bag too." Mark said. He would see it as a favor if he turned into one of the undead.

"It's your choice. You're right when you're saying that we need that stuff, but we might get killed trying to get it." Alec said.

"But walking around here without any food is kinda dangerous too. Without a car they zombies would run us down and kill us easily." Mark told Alec.

"Let's do it then." Alec decided and the two friends were of to another adventure.

The sun was behind the two boys and when they walked they saw their shadows. Alecs shadow was taller than Marks and thinner. He looked like a scarecrow. Mark wasn't fat but he was bigger than Alec, broad shouldered and tall, just not as tall as Alec. If he had spent all those hours working out instead of lying on the sofa watching TV he probably would have looked like a doped up ox or something. After a while they saw the roadstop cafe and the humve. The zombies were nowhere to be seen, probably still inside. When the two boys got there they put the bag down and armed themselves. Mark took the shotgun and the .38 in his pocket while Alec grabbed the two glocks. They shared an unceartain look and went in.

The first thing that hit the two boys when they entered was the hideous coppery smell of blood. And Jenny's corpse, it was eaten upon. They didn't see any of their lost comrades at first, but then they saw that the kitchen door was open. And that was the gates of hell. And from it the Jimmy zombie came charging. Mark reacted first and fired of a load of buckshot at the enemy. It hit the totally shredded the zombies shoulder and threw it backwards. But as soon as it landed it tried to get up again. But then Alec stepped in, holding one of the glocks with both hands. He fired two shots into the ghouls face and Jimmys head was destroyed like a melon hitting the ground from the third floor. Almost at the same time the Stan zombie and the Kyle zombie stormed out. Mark pumped the shotgun and started to pace backwards aiming at the zombies. He fired another load at the two walking dead but missed. Alec on the other hand started to fire and emptied the clip at the two corpses. At least some of the bullets hit, but only one did real damage. Stan took one in the head and the wall behind him was painted red and pink.

Mark pumped the shotgun again and fired a third shot at his former friend. This time he hit Kyle (since he was much closer now) in the head, perfect shot. Kyles head exploded and both Alec's and Mark's clothes were splattered with brain and blood and bone. And last of the undead Morgan's corpse came stumbling. The zombie took one step, fell and tried to get up to take one more step and fall again. Mark pumped the shotgun and ended his misery with another almost point blanc shot. Again he was splattered with brains and blood and bone. The building went silent and both boys threw up. When they had been fighting they didn't really care about all the horrors they saw, but later, when the adrenaline didn't last anymore, the things they'd seen reached them.

When the whole vomiting part was over they searched for the gun Jimmy had used last night to take car of Jenny. After a few minutes of searching they found it and put it back in the weapon bag. Then they ate, a lot. Candybars, coca cola and chips, everything went down to still their hunger. But they ate outside since the scene inside wasn't to appealing.

"Do you think we should bury them?" Mark asked, unceartan of what to do with the truly dead inside.

"Yeah right, since we don't have a shovel and we both are to damn tired to really do anything." Alec said with a hint of sarcasm.

"Should we burn them?" Mark asked a minute later.

"You mean like burn the whole house?" Alec asked.

"I don't want to fucking move them and letting them lay inside there and rot is a bit... unceremonial." Mark said.

"Then we should grab everything usefull inside before we torch the place." Said Alec.

"OK. But let's do it quick. I don't want to be there a minute more than necessary." Mark said and the two friends went inside to pack some food.

The smell inside was worse, more smell of blood and the new vomit smell made it a torture to stay there. When they had packed as much food as they could carry they searched for something to start the fire with. They found some bottle used for removing paint with, but before they sprayed as much as they could over the floor in the shop and lit a match Mark did something. He walked over to the corpses of Stan and Kyle, the so called South Park brothers. He ripped a piece of cloth from their T-shirts and tied it around his own arm.

"Why did you do that?" Alec asked as he watched Mark finish.

"Since we're not going to get any ashes or anything to remember them with we might aswell do it like this." He told Alec.

"That's a little sick, I'm not going to do it." Alec anwered. Actually he could understand what Mark meant, but he wasn't going to do anything like that.

Then the two boys emptied the bottles over the floor and lit a match and threw it. And ran away from the inferno as the blazing fire spread throughout the whole building. They ran a good twenty meters away from the place and then stood and watched as the flames tore through the roof. As they stood there and sweated from the imense heat Mark realized something.

"The keys! The fucking keys!" He shouted and Alec realized that they forgot the keys inside. "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" Both he and Alec shouted.

In front of them thick black smoke rose as the flames devoured everything inside. They got tired of using every single curse after a while and simply sat down to watch as the house fell apart. Mark had never ever in his whole life felt so fucking stupid as he did now. For all he knew he might have killed both him and Alec. But at least they had food. But that was about it. The whole scene was almost funny.

"What the fuck are we going to do now?" Alec asked.

"We walk." Mark answered.

"Okay. Beats sitting here and sweating our asses off." Alec answered and grabbed his bags.

"What do we really know about the 'zombies?'" Alec asked Mark as they walked away from the burning house and their charred friends.

"They're dead, they're fast and you've got to shot them in the head to kill them." Mark answered. They didn't really know much about the enemy, but at least they knew how to kill them.

"And that they infect through bites." Alec added. That was everything.

"Wanna know something funny?" Mark asked Alec.

"What?" Alec answered.

"They say that if one skips school as much as we did one would end up unemployed and without education, but we skipped school and are alive. Kind of ironic isn't i?" Mark said.

"When you say it like that." Alec said and laughed a little.

They walked a while without saying anything until Alec broke the silence.

"What do you think happened to our family?" He asked.

"I don't really want to know. But I guess that they're as dead as everyone else." Mark answered.

"You're probably right, but I hope they went down fighting." Alec said.

"Picture yourself my mom go down fighting against one of those creatures." Mark said and both boys thought of Marks behemothic mother doing anything.

"I can picture myself that. Like the cavetroll in Lord of the Rings. Breaking necks and smashing skulls." He said and both boys laughed for at leat two minutes. Then they kept walking.

They walked for hours without stopping. Nothing happened at all. They didn't see any kind of life anywhere, no zombies, no animals and no survivors. After a while both of the boys got a severe headache, the result of only eating sugar and caffeine. Mark regretted that he didn't search for any aspirin or something before they torched the place. But then their luck turned. From far away they heard the unmisstakeable sound of an engine. A car engine. Mark almost felt for doing a little dance as he saw the two cars come down the road against them. The first car stopped ten meters in front of the two boys who stood in the middle of the road, clutching their guns and hoping that this weren't the wrong kind of people. Then the second car stopped a meter or so behind the first one. Two people emerged from the first car. The one sitting in the drivers seat was a middle aged man with white streaks in his brown hair, he had a double barreled shotgun and looked like if he was some kind of hillbilly or something in the flanell shirt and bleached jeans. The one riding shotgun didn't really have a shotgun, he had a revolver and looked like a younger edition of the driver. From the second car three people got out. The first was a black man in his early thirties looking as if was straight out of the ghetto holding an automatic pistol in his right hand. The second was a twenty something guy with sunglasses and typical skater clothes. He didn't have a gun, he simply held a fireaxe. The third man was in the same age as the one with the fire axe and had a blonde beard and hair and didn't really have a weapon. These people didn't look like the wrong kind of people. A ragtag group of survivors in a world were everything was turned upside down maybe, but not the wrong kind of people. For several moments the two groups stood and watched each other. No one wanted to make the first move, so they just stood there for a while. But then the first car's driver made the first move.

"You fellas want a ride?" He asked like he was driving past the two of them a normal day.

"Sure." Mark said and started to walk to the cars.

"Not so fast, drop them guns!" The younger redneck shouted and raised his enourmous revolver. Both Mark and Alec stopped instantly as they realized that someone pointed a gun at them. Maybe this was the wrong kind of people after all Mark thought.

"Stop that Carl!" The older redneck said like he was telling someone to be a little more polite. "Don't you see that these two are 'live and kicking. And two kids, they don't want to harm us at all." He said. Now he spoke in a calming tone, reassuring Carl Jonas that Mark and Alec didn't want to harm them. It seemed to work as the man lowered the revolver. "Sorry 'bout that, he's a little jumpy and all after everything that has happened. Where are you from anyways?" The driver continued.

The three men in the second car had reached the first one now.

"We're from Rockport down south. Is it as bad up north as it is there?" Alec asked.

"It sure as hell is bad up there. Are you saying that it isn't any better here?" The driver asked.

"I don't think so. You hope you're not having any bitten people with you." Mark said.

"No, why would that be bad?"

"Because the viruse or whatever it is seems to transmit through bites." Mark said.

"That's good to know, how do you know that?" The fire axe man asked.

"We saw it happen. There were seven of us back then. And as you see we're only two." Alec said.

"To bad. Where do you think we should go then?" The old redneck said.

"Anywhere. Last thing we saw on TV was that this shit was everywhere." Mark said.

"That's bad. I'm Steve and the youngster over there is my nefue Carl." He said and pointed at the younger hillbilly. "In the car over there is my daughter Jessica." Both boys looked at the car and got a glance of a beautiful face belonging to a girl in their own age. "As we drove south we hooked up with these three young men who can introduce themselves."

"I'm Brandon." The fire axe guy said.

"I'm Terry." The black man said.

"Ryan." The third one grunted.

"I'm Mark and this is Alec." Mark introduced them.

"We'll get to know each other during the ride. I don't have any room in my car so you two car ride with Brandon and the others." Steve said and returned to the car.

The two boys got inside the car with the others and they were off. Terry simply followed Steve down the road to wherever he was heading. No one seemed to know anything the two boys didn't know and it was good to be in the company of some other people. Everything felt safe. But Mark kept on guard. He promised himself to always be on his guard nowdays. Nowhere was completley safe, only safer. This was safer than trudging down the road.


	4. Gas, Guns and Guttermouth

Chapter four: Gas, guns and Guttermouth

No one talked much in the car. It was a comfortable silence, except for the Guttermouth CD Ryan and Brandon seemed to have put on repeat. Mark and Alec didn't say anything, actually it was pretty good. Everyone knew what the others were thinking about. What had happened? Why? Where are my family? Mark didn't think about that, or at least he tried to. The less he knew about what happened to them the better. He knew they were dead and that was it. No dark feelings of revenge, no need to know who did it. He was alive and he planned to continue that way. Alec on the other hand also knew what probably had happened to his close ones but wondered if it really was true. Maybe they weren't dead, maybe they were alive and waiting for him to come back home. But he forced those thoughts out of his head, Mark was right when he said: 'I guess they're as dead as everyone else.'. He seemed to have taken this whole mess pretty good after all, and he had actually saved Alec's life when he grabbed the guns and dragged him out of the restaurant. And it was good to be with some other people, other survivors. These people looked as if they were honest and friendly, but who knew? Seeing his dead friends charge at him had made him a little suspicious. He could remember what had happened inside that restaurant, how he and Mark had killed Stan and Kyle. But no, he told himself, they weren't his friends. They were zombies, the enemy. If he got his hands on the person responsible for this he was going to throw him to the fucking zombies. But for the moment he simply wanted to survive.

They drove in their two car caravan for the rest of the day. About sunset Steve stopped the car and went outside. Carl followed and last of all came the girl, Jessica. For the first time both Mark and Alec saw more than her face. She was as both boys would have said, a hottie. Nice face, nice ass, nice everything. And she wasn't hot like girl next door hot, more like playmate hot. Terry opened his door and walked out to ask what was going on. The rest followed. When everyone stood in a group on the highway and faced each other Steve started talking.

"We're running low on gas, or out of it more likely. How about you?" He asked Terry.

"We are a little low to, in a while we'll be needing a refuelling." Terry answered.

"I think there's a gas station about ten miles from here." Alec told the group.

"Hope you're right, cause that's where we are going." Steve said.

"Are we going to trust those boys?" Carl asked. "For all we know they might slit our throats when we're asleep!"

"I don't think so. These guys are just as good as anyone of us. In the short time we've known 'em they have told us more about the infected ones than we did know before. They've only been helping and you're telling me that you don't trust them?" Steve asked, his tone went from normal to almost angry as he talked. "Do you think you're special just because you lost your fiancée? Everyone here has lost at least as much as you, probably more."

"Ok, for now. Just don't come begging me for help when someone betrays us. Fucking nursery school!" Carl said and returned to his place riding shotgun.

"Excuse him. He's lost a fiancée and everything. Are you sure there's a gas station there?" Steve continued.

"Not entirely sure, but I think so." Alec answered.

"We might have to fight when we're there. Have you fought these crazies?" Steve asked Mark and Alec.

"We have killed four of them. You've got to shoot them in the head, like in the movies." Mark said, remembering all those B-horror movies.

"That's more than anyone here has. Hell, we didn't even know we had to shoot them in the head." Terry said.

"Dad shot one when we escaped. He hit him in the shoulder." Jessica added in on the conversation. _Man! Even her voice is hot! _Mark thought as he heard it.

"That's all action we've seen since we left home. What about you guys?" Steve asked and looked at the three young men.

"Terry shot one, emptied a whole clip into it until it lay twitching on the ground and Brandon slammed one on the head. That's about it." Ryan said and the two others simply nodded.

"That's good. Do you have any ammo for that gun?" Steve asked.

"Two clips counting the one inside." Terry said. "How about shells for that shotgun?"

"A box of 20 guage shells in the car that is almost full and a full box of .367 for Carl's revolver. What are you boys packing?"

"This shotgun, three automatics and a revolver but only three extra shells for the shotgun and two spare clips for the two glocks and none for the rest." Mark answered and saw the surprised looks on their faces.

"That's quite an arsenal." Said Steve. "You mind sharing?"

"Not at all." Alec said and went back to the car to get the bag with the guns. When he came back he grabbed 'his' glock and the spare clips and tossed the second one back in without a clip in it. Ryan took the .45 and tried to familiarise himself with it. Brandon took the .38 but kept his axe. Now everyone except for Jessica had a gun, but Steve didn't want his child to do anything else than sitting in the car while they did what they had to.

"Anyone here did any military service except for me and Carl?" Steve asked.

Brandon and Ryan shook their heads.

"Does growing up on the streets od Seattle count?" Terry asked and everyone knew what he meant. He could handle himself as good as any GI. Steve didn't answer that.

"Then we're off. If anyone thinks this is too dangerous, say so." Steve said instead. "You guys can drive first so that Alec can lead the way."

They returned to their cars and drove away, Alec leading the way. And he was right. After about ten miles there where a gas station out in the loneliness of the Californian countryside. There where a couple of houses on the other side of the road. There where no cars at the gas station, but the lights were on. None of the creatures could be seen. But Mark kept suspicious.

The two cars drove up to the gas stations parking lot and stopped. They hadn't made a plan or something, but they knew they had to act fast.

"Stay here while I go in and check with Carl. And tank the cars for gods sake." Steve ordered and went inside the gas station followed by his nephew.

The five young men gathered around the car where Jessica was sitting, wanting to be outside the others showing that she wasn't a child. Mark clutched his shotgun and scanned the houses over the road. Ryan started to fill Steve's car up. From the inside of the gas station the group heard the loud barking of both Steve's barrels and three not so loud shots probably coming from Carl's revolver. No one got time to turn around and see what happened, two shapes came running towards the gas station from the houses. It was a man and a young woman, both in their underwear. Everyone waited until the zombies got closer, it was to far away to shoot them with the pistols and the shotgun. But as they entered the streetlights light so that everyone could see the bite wound on the woman's neck and the missing flesh on the mans stomach they raised their guns. Mark figured that he didn't want to waste a shell and didn't fire, but everyone else did. The young woman, not really attractive, was hit by four bullets, two of them in the head. Red and pink sprayed behind her like a mist and she fell down to never get up. The man, a little overweight and in his later thirties was hit by one bullet, in his thigh. He man fell down and tried to get up, but tried to take the first step on his wounded leg, and fell again. Someone put a bullet in his head the second later.

"Clear!" Terry shouted, remembering the movie Navy Seals.

"Clear!" Mark shouted, that reminded him of the bad B-movie Navy Seals.

"Clear!" Brandon shouted and figured Terry had got a pretty good idea.

"Clear!" Ryan said, not wanting to waste any energy on shouting.

"I'm okay." Alec said, realising that everyone else was okay as well.

The second later Steve and Carl came out from the gas station. Carl was now holding a small pump shotgun and a bag with food in it. Steve also had a bag of food. It looked like the looting had gone perfectly fine.

"Had to take care of two 'infected' inside, but we did fine." Steve said and looked at the two truly dead ones on the pavement. "See you did too."

Then someone spotted a group of creatures coming their way. This time it wasn't two or three, it was seven maybe eight. The group started to howl like animals as soon as they saw the group of survivors. Everyone raised their guns, aiming and waiting for a moment to fire. Steve opened the door to his car, threw the food inside and grabbed Jessica.

"Everyone get inside, now!" Steve shouted.

The group started to move inside but everyone kept their guns trained at the oncoming group. The last person to get inside was Mark and when he walked backwards through the door the swarm entered the streetlight where the two corpses lay dead. He fired a shell at the closest one, a man so old that it looked strange when he ran, the age didn't seem to stop him though. The mans torso exploded and a red flower of blood exploded behind him. The man fell to the ground twitching. Mark took a step backwards and slammed the door shut. Inside the others had formed a half circle around the door and all aimed their guns at it. Mark took his place besides Alec and Jessica who now held Carl's revolver.

"When they get through everyone starts pacing backwards and firing. Don't panic!" Steve shouted.

The creatures outside seemed to be tackling and slamming their fists at the door. Sooner or later it would break, all they could do was to wait. As they waited Mark reached down into his pocket and reloaded the shotgun with one of the shells. _Only two spare ones. Make them count, _he thought. He was going to make this he told himself. He looked at everyone else who seemed to be staring at the door. Steve's face was sheer determination, he wanted to live and for Jessica to live. Carl looked pissed as usual, but this time he looked even more pissed clutching the small shotgun he had. Brandon looked concentrated on making it through this, his axe was leaned to a shelf if he ran out of ammo. Ryan actually looked calm, but Mark guessed he wasn't. Terry looked a little stressed, scared maybe. Alec was the only one that really looked scared, but he held his gun prepared to kill, to survive. And last of all, Jessica. She didn't look scared, uncertain was more like it, like if she didn't know what to do with the big revolver she gripped. And of course, she looked good. The door broke down earlier than anyone thought. The ghouls came streaming through the door as a river.

Before anyone reacted Steve fired both barrels into the creature. It hit and completely destroyed everything from the neck and up. It didn't fell backwards, it was pushed forward by the storming zombies trying to reach the survivors. Then everyone else started shooting. The second and third zombie was shoot to shreds. Everyone but Steve and Mark fired. But more zombies came. Everyone started to walk backwards, widening the circle. Mark fired his first shot at a man who looked a lot like Keanu Reaves. _Dodge this_, he thought as the impersonator got his head blown to shreds. He pumped the shotgun and saw the spent shell fly through the air.

It was a slaughter. None of the zombies got close to the humans. They gunned them down as soon as they entered the room. Soon everything went quiet, everyone's adrenaline was flushed out of their system.

"Clear!" Terry shouted.

"Clear!" Carl shouted.

"Clear!" Steve shouted.

"Clear!" Brandon shouted.

"Clear." Mark said.

"Clear." Alec said.

"Clear." Ryan said.

"Clear." Jessica said.

While the gunsmoke cleared they saw the carnage they had created. Seven bodies lay on the floor, all with their heads damaged more or less. The first thing anyone did was Carl, he started reloading. The second one to do anything was Jessica who vomited over some magazines. When Carl was done reloading he threw the box of 12 gauge shells to Mark. He still looked pissed. Steve went to comfort his daughter. Mark reloaded his shotgun and picked up eight shells from the box and put them in his pocket. Then he threw the box back to Carl. It seemed as if Carl was going to accept the two new boys as members of the group, at least maybe.

"You did good folks. Let's stay here a while." He said.

Everyone sat down to catch breath for a while. Those who could reload did so and the others simply rested. Mark glanced at the corpses at the door. Some of them looked like if they had been awakened at night and killed while some had clothes on and seemed to have been turned a little earlier. Mark didn't know what to think of it yet.

"What are we going to do now?" Brandon asked Steve.

"I think we should fill the tanks and get the hell out of here." Steve said. "Or we stay here for the night. I don't think there's any infected around here anymore. Actually I'm getting a little tired. Maybe we should stay here."

"I think we should." Ryan said and rubbed his eyes, apparently he hadn't slept a lot since the start of this.

"Then we stay here. Let's fill the tanks in case we have to leave in a hurry." Steve said. "I think it's best for me to stay here with my daughter. Can anyone else do it?"

"Sure. I'm on it." Terry said. He went outside followed by Brandon and Ryan. As they went outside they heard a gunshot, probably them taking care of the twitcher outside.

Mark sat down and leaned himself against his shotgun. Alec leaned against the wall. Both boys sat for themselves a bit away from the others. Steve, Carl and Jessica was talking to each other but the two boys only sat silent trying to forget what they had seen earlier.

They sat quiet for a while until the three young men came inside to report that the cars were filled and that they hadn't seen a single infected on the outside. Together they, Mark, Alec and Carl dragged the corpses outside and piled them up. Steve was busy comforting his daughter about what had happened, even thought it didn't seem as she needed to hear that it was us or them more than five times. When Mark came inside after piling the corpses he saw that there was a pool of blood where the creatures had fallen. And it smelled.

Everyone was pretty hungry and ate whatever they could find in the store. Then they decided who would be taking the first watch and since Mark and Alec was the only ones who had slept anything at all since yesterday they got the first watch, followed by Brandon and Ryan and so on. This gave the boys an opportunity to talk to each other without anyone else hearing them.

"How much ammo do you have left?" Mark asked his friend. The night was cool and Mark was a little cold in his Hawaii shirt.

"Don't know." Alec answered and took out the clip and checked it. "Five bullets in this and the two spare clips. How about you?"

"With that box Carl threw me I'm nowhere close to running out. So, what do you think about them?" He said.

"You mean the others? They're okay, Steve's a good guy and a good leader, Brandon and the guys are okay. The only bad thing is that Carl seems a little weird, but I guess we'll get used to it. It's good to see that there's others alive." said. And it was true, it was good to see that there were others.

"What do you think of Jessica then? You didn't mention her." Mark asked.

"Hot, that's about it. But I think Steve is that kind of father who would skin us alive if we looked at her in the wrong way." Alec said. "Maybe not skin, but at least be pissed."

Mark nodded. "Is she hotter than a certain Linda Romero you talked so much about?" He asked his friend with a smile. Alec had had a crush on her for as long as he or anyone else could remember.

"Don't know. Not really. But since she and all the other ones in school are stone cold dead we might as well forget about them." Alec said.

The two boys didn't say anything for a while. Alec broke the silence.

"We should check out those houses tomorrow." He said. "We might find something useful."

"Maybe, do you think there's any zombies there?" Mark asked.

"Nah, they would have showed up by now. By the way, we did good today. No one got hurt and we fought three times." Alec said.

"It wasn't because of me or you. Both Steve and Carl has military training and Terry seems to be something of a gangster or something. That's why everything went so smooth. And in the restaurant we had luck, that's all." Mark said. Actually he thought he had done fine so far, but he didn't want to brag.

"Maybe, but as long as we don't die I don't really care if it's luck or Steve who saves our asses." Alec said.

"You got a point there." Mark said. "We'll talk to Steve about looting the houses tomorrow."

_Kinda funny, two days ago my worst crimes were shoplifting and smoking pot, now I'm talking about looting four houses clutching my stolen shotgun that I killed a man with half an hour earlier. But I feel no remorse. _Mark thought and smiled as he sat on the car and watched across the road. It's strange what a apocalyptic catastrophe where the dead rise to kill the living can do to a boy.


	5. Hints

Authors Note: Some of the text (two sentences) out of this chapter have been stolen from the ongoing online novel called Monster Island. I did this only because it's so goddamn good.

Chapter five: Hints

I see a bad moon rising  
I see trouble on the way

The first cases started in America, but with the air traffic reaching every corner on the earth the disease spread quickly. If good had been a real being and not a fictional character for people to worship when they needed comfort he would have felt a chill run down his spine when he saw what unfolded beneath him.

I see earthquakes and lightnin'  
I see bad times today.

About noon on the second day of the crisis the barricades around the white house fell and everyone inside joined the ranks of the undead. Except for those who was lucky enough to eat a bullet before being eaten. Mr. President wasn't one of the lucky ones. Seeing the people he once held so much power over come running for him, his flesh, made him turn and run in fear. If he hadn't panicked he would have realized his odds and put the gun to his temple.

Don't go 'round tonight  
For it's bound to take your live

Asia, being the most populated part of the world didn't last long. Before the voilence reached the it's gargantuan levels the battle over Kashmir raged, both India and Pakistan throwing everything they had into the fray. It didn't take long until one of the countries fired a thermonuclear warhead against the other. No one knew who started it, but within an hour both countries had used up their supplies.

There's a bad moon on the rise.

Shanghai and Hongkong was turned into radioactive ashes spread in the wind. The nuclear warheads either came from the Chinese goverment, a breakout group of the Chinese military or the Russians, trying to agressively defend its borders.

I hear hurricanes a blowin'  
And I know the end is coming soon

Russia didn't succed. It was a big country compared to its number of inhabitants and there was no way that the russian goverment could keep track of all the outbreaks in the rural areas. Soon the infected hordes reached the bigger cities. And in the cities the infection spread like an fire in gasoline.

I fear rivers overflowing  
I hear the voice for rage and ruin.

Hours after the first outbreak in the US Europe reported similar acts of random voilence. The virus spread through England and Ireland in a matter of hours. Contact was lost with Berlin, Paris, Rome and Madrid about 9 am GMT the first day. Still no one really knew what was going on. The rest of the major cities fell hours later. The last footage to be seen from Geneva, home of the Geneva convention was looting, killing and the infected swarming the streets. A brief video footage remembered anyone who watched what the human nature was all about. A man had dragged two other men out into the streets, hands tied to their backs. He ordered them to their knees. Then he executed them, two shoots to the head, no fuzz. The second after the last man hitting the ground and leaking his brains out on the street one of the creatures lunged the executoner and bit down on his throat.

So don't go out tonight  
It's bound to take your live

Scandinavia wasn't an exception. The only thing that differed was that it took a little longer. The wide woodlands where no one lived stopped the epidemic to spread from the big cities to the rural areas for some time. A day or two. Sooner or later Scandinavia fell, died and got up again.

There's a bad moon on the rise.

Most of Australias Major cities got infected as soon as everywhere else. The countryside however took some time, but in time it fell too.

I hope you got your shit together  
Hope you are quite prepaired to die

Africa fared best of all continents. Before it had been a place where horrors such as children as young as ten was dragged out of school to fight wars they couldn't understand occured. The unstable countries—the feudal states, the anarchic backwaters—where you wouldn't dare walk out the door without a gun, where bodyguards were fashion accessories—they did a lot better in the end. The child soliders everyone had wanted to outlaw before the epidemic became the worlds last and only organized army and police force. Ironic, isn't it.

Looks like we're in for nasty weather  
One eye taken for an eye.

In a week only scattered groups of either the luckiest or the worst had survived. The former great cities remained only as tombs, everything once so great was now useless. Only the things that had mattered when we dwelt in caves and fought animals over food mattered now, survival. This was a brave new world. A world where the strong survived on cost of the weak. Only the ones thinking _no merce, no remorse _lived to see another day.

Don't go 'round tonight  
It's bound to take your life  
There's a bad moon on the rise.


	6. Loot

Chapter six: Loot

The night went on without any disturbances. When their shift was over the two boys went inside and tried to wake up Brandon and Ryan. After about five minutes of trying, when the two boys almost had resorted to violence, they started to get up, knowing what was about to happen. It took another five minutes for them to stop rubbing their eyes, grab their stuff and get out. When that was done the two boys tried to find a place to sleep on. Since the staff room was taken by Steve, Carl and Jessica they had to find someplace else to sleep at. Mark made a bed out of three chairs he found and slept on it, it wasn't the best place he had slept on, but it was better than the cold floor. Alec on the other hand had to sleep on the floor since he didn't find any better place.

Mark woke up at sunrise when the sun hit his eyes. He blinked his eyes and tried to remember where he was and what happened last night. It didn't take to long and when he knew that he got up and looked around. The only thing he saw besides the usual things one would find in a gas station was Alec lying on the floor with the glock in his belt. The glock had turned into a part of Alec, or at least something he knew and associated with him. It was as much him as his shoes or his T-shirt. That was kind of scary when he thought about it. _Wonder if I look the same with this shotgun? _He thought and rose to his feet and slung the shotgun over his shoulder. When he looked around he saw Brandon and Ryan lying in a corner, sleeping and snoring. _Guess it's Terry and Carl out there now_, he thought.No one else seemed to be awake so he sneaked around a little more. He found a little to eat and sat down on his improvised bed and finished the meal.

As he sat down he thought about things. He forced the thoughts about his family out of his head and concentrated on other things, more important things. If they looked for things in the houses, what should they look out for? What was going on in the rest of the world? What had happened to the government? Not that he cared really. What if everything went back to normal, if the dead just started to stay motionless again? What would become of him then? Would he be arrested for the things he had done? No he wouldn't. Because it would never go back to 'normal' again. And if it did, he wouldn't be arrested. Everyone that lived had done the same as him, the right thing.

Maybe he could become something in this world. A leader maybe? But that was what Steve did. But he sure as hell would become more than he would have in the old world. Back then his only future was to become a pizza delivery guy or something with as low pay as it, if he got a work at all. All thanks to his great childhood. But in the two days this shit had been going on he already had become someone, a survivor. That was better then most of the people he knew, or had known. Then he thought about what others that might survive something like this. The average Joe didn't have a too big chance, unless they were lucky ones. Like he and Alec. Others that might survive was cops, criminals and the other ones with skills that might save their lives. And the ones that had been preparing for this, the survivalists. He was sure that if he lived to meet other people at least a few of them would be Christian, ex-army loonies who had been prepared for a thing like this. People had laughed at them, called them crazies back then. But now it was them who laughed back at the mindless zombies who once had been mocking them. That was pure irony.

Marks thoughts was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. If he hadn't been so tired he would have screamed. First he thought it was Alec, but he was wrong. He turned around and first saw a slender hand, a girly hand and then the beautiful face reflect in the sun. He couldn't tell if her hair was brown or black in the sunlight. She didn't look like Steve and Carl at all. Her mother might have been a native American or Latino. And in the tank top and tight jeans she was wearing she looked extremely good, as usual.

"Hi, did I scare you?" She asked and looked a little embarrassed over sneaking up on him.

"Nah." He said. Actually she had scared him, but he didn't want to break the macho guy code of honour. "I just woke up, do you know what time it is?"

"I don't have a watch on me but I would guess it's around seven or something." She answered. "You're Mark, right?"

"Yup, and that guy over there is Alec." Mark answered and looked at the sleeping form of his friend.

"Did you know Alec before all of this?" She asked.

"Yeah, I've known him since elementary school. We've always been friends. I, Alec and Stan." He spoke the last words with a hint of sadness.

"Where is Stan now?" Jessica asked before realising that it might be something he didn't want to talk about. Before she could tell him that it was alright if he didn't want to talk about it he answered.

"He's lying in a pile of ash with a bullet through his head." Mark answered calmly as if they were talking about where Stan had moved to. But inside Mark felt the loss. Stan had been more family than the one he had been born into.

"Who did it?" Jessica asked.

"He and his brother Kyle was infected. Either I shot him or Alec did it, I don't really know. All of it happened so fast, bang bang and it was over." He said and tried to keep calm. The worst of it was that he didn't feel bad about it.

"Was it hard to do it?" She asked with a look of symphathy. Mark started to wonder if she had a morbid obsession with death or something, she didn't look goth at all.

"No actually it wasn't. I kept thinking that it wasn't him at all. And before I knew it he was dead." He said. That was what was the most fucked up thing about all of it, not that his friend had died and got up on his feet, that he hadn't hesitated a second to kill him again.

"You've lost a lot in this." She said after a while.

Mark nodded and the two teenagers sat quiet for a while thinking about what they had lost.

"You lost any family?" Mark asked after a while. He didn't really want to ask straight out how her mother had died.

"You mean my mother?" She said. Mark nodded. "No, she died in a car accident when I was to young to remember it. It was then dad moved up to Washington. We lived in Texas before, but I don't remember much of it. Carl moved with us."

"So actually you did lose family, just not now. " Mark said and saw her smile, which made Mark smile. "And I kinda guessed that at least Steve was from Texas, no offence but he and Carl looks a little hillbilly."

"Guess you could say that. I have to apologise for Carl, he's a little weird now with everything going on." She said.

"That's okay, I can understand that." Mark said. He could understand why he was a little weird, but this guy had aimed a gun at him twice, and that he didn't forgive. Mark had lost a lot too, but he didn't go around pointing guns at anyone he didn't know.

"He was going to get married and all. He saw his fiancée get killed and eaten. Things like that make people a little weird. Before this he was like a brother to me." She said. "What do you think about them?" She said and looked at Brandon and Ryan's direction.

"Them?" Mark asked and pointed at the two young men. "They're okay. I think they knew each other before this. They don't talk much but from what they've said they seem like good guys."

"They said they knew each other before this. We met all three of them about two hours before you, so I don't know much."

"Alec proposed that we should check the other houses today. What do you think about that?" Mark asked.

"Isn't that a little dangerous?" She asked.

"I don't think there's any zombies left here now. If there was they would have showed by now. And if there were we would easily kick their asses. We're eight people with guns and there can't be more than two maybe three of them in the houses. You did good last night. Everyone did." She had, and from what Mark had seen she shot twice as good as him. A certain Texan gene maybe?

"Yeah right." She said and sighed. "And then I threw up. No one else did. It was the first time I saw someone get killed."

"So what? You survived. The only reason I didn't throw up because I didn't have anything left in me to throw up. First time I saw the zombies I puked as I've never puked before. And it was pure luck that I didn't shit my pants. No one is or should be used to see dead people walking around. That's for the movies." Mark said. "Yesterday was the first time I didn't throw up."

"Really? I thought you were some kind of gang member or something that was used to this things, or at least that you had seen a lot of bad things before all of this." She said, part joking, part serious.

"You did? Before all of this the only thing I did was to skip school and smoke pot." He started but was cut of by a new voice.

"And you jerked off far more times what was healthy for you." Alec said. Both Jessica and Mark turned to see that the sleeping Alec wasn't sleeping.

"Nah, that was what you did. Far to much." Mark said to his friend who smiled at the insult. _Probably true about him_, Mark thought.

Alec rubbed his eyes and looked around at his surroundings.

"So, what time is it?" He asked.

"We think it's about seven or something." Mark said. Alec got up and sat down on the third chair.

"Did you really think I was a gang member?" Mark asked Jessica.

"No, not really. But both you and Alec took the fight as if it was something that happened every day. As if you were used to see dead people." She said.

"We did?" They asked simultaneously.

"Yeah you did. When I was scared shitless you two looked like if you did something totally normal." She said.

"I can't believe that. I was scared shitless." Alec said. "I didn't think we were going to make it."

"I did. See you kids are getting to know each other a little." Steve said from behind them. "Let's wake the others. We're moving out early, no time for slackers here." Everyone in that family seemed to have a bad habit of sneaking up on people.

Steve walked over to Ryan and Brandon and woke them up by giving them each a light kick. The two men got up much faster this time. Then he went outside to get the two others. When everyone had gathered and ate breakfast Steve started to talk.

"Does anyone have an idea of where to go?" Steve asked the group.

"What if we went east. This might have been something affecting the coasts." Brandon said.

"Beats sitting here. But they said it was everywhere on TV." Alec said. "But we can hope that the army has made some kind of base there or something."

Steve looked at Alec. "Do you believe everything they say on TV? Remember 9/11 when the bodycount went from 10000 to 2500 in a couple of weeks? This might be the same thing, maybe they thought that all the looting and that stuff that comes with things like this was the same thing as the infection." He didn't sound to convincing. "But let's get back to the main problem, what are we going to do now?" Steve asked the group.

"I had an idea last night. Why don't we check the other houses for stuff?" Said Alec.

"What stuff are you proposing? We've got food, water and gas. We don't need anything else. " Carl said with his suspicious tone.

"Weapons, ammo and stuff like that." Mark said before Alec could answer. "That's becoming as useful as food now days."

"To bad you're right about that. But what if there's any infected in there? You thought about that?" Steve asked.

"They would have shown. They're to dumb to ambush us." Jessica said. "I'm voting for looting if we're going to vote about it. " Then she gave Mark a glance.

"And if there are any of them there we can take care of them. There's twelve bodies in that pile out there, that's more people than it should live in those houses." Mark said.

"You've got a point there. How many shot's have you got left since yesterday?" He asked the group.

"Two shots and then I'm chopping the fuckers." Brandon said and looked back at his axe as if it was a living thing, a friend. Even if he hadn't used it yet he looked more than ready to do so as soon as he got an opportunity.

"I don't know how to see how many there's left in this one." Ryan said and looked confused. Terry took a look at the clip and said: "He's got two left. I got one full clip and that's it."

"The one in the gun and one full and another with like three shots in it." Alec said and everyone turned to look at Mark.

"Full chamber and eight in my pocket." He said.

"Are we going to vote or something about doing this or are everyone up for it?" Steve said.

Everyone agreed that it was a good idea to check the houses and together they made up a plan. The 'teams' that took watch (Mark/Alec, Ryan/Brandon and Terry/Carl) were going to take a house each. Steve and Jessica took the last house. If anything happened to a team they would shout as loud as they could and the rest would come running for rescue. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was something. Everyone finished their breakfast, grabbed their things and left the gas station.

The houses were placed in a row and Mark and Alec got the first to the right. It was a two story wooden house that seemed to have been built at the end of the 1900-century. A pretty new pickup was parked outside. Mark walked up to the open door and looked in. He held his shotgun tight and waited for something to come charging at him. No one did.

"Hello!" He shouted. If there was something inside it would have heard it.

"There's no one there." Alec said. "Let's get this over with."

The two boys walked inside looking after anything that could be useful. The house seemed to have belonged to a middle aged couple. In the living room they found lot's of photos on the couple. At one they were in their twenties, another in their thirties and so on. The couple didn't have any children, at least no photos of them. There wasn't anything useful in the living room. Or at least they thought so, until Mark glanced at the bookshelf. In it there were a lot of known books, the bible, some Steinbeck and even some Shakespeare. That didn't count as useful Mark reasoned. But a few books were on had titles like _Wilderness survival, SAS survival _and things like that. Usually Mark didn't read to much, but without television and the internet he might as well start to do so. The books went into a bag. The two boys moved on into the kitchen. Nothing there but lot's of sharp knives. But who needs a sharp knife when he has a gun? They moved on to the second floor. They split up to do it faster, Mark checked the bedroom while Alec went somewhere else, the guest room or something.

The first thing that struck Mark as he entered the bedroom was that there was a lot of blood in the bed, a lot. He scanned the room with his eyes and didn't see anything useful. He went on to check the closet to his left. Besides lot's of clothes he found something really useful. A smaller fortune actually. In a shoebox he found a .38 revolver, the same as Brandon's, and a box of .38 bullets and on the top shelf there was a winchester rifle and a box of ammo for it. This truly was a nation full of gun nuts, Moore was right. He the slung the rifle over his shoulder, put the two boxes of ammo in his bag and the revolver in his pocket. Then he went to get Alec. He on the other hand hadn't found anything at all.

"Why do you always get to find the cool stuff?" Alec asked with fake jealousy.

"Guess it's just sheer dumb luck or something. Or karma." Mark answered. "You can take this, I already have my shotgun. Maybe Steve or Carl want it though. And if they do you should give it to them, they're better shots than you or me." He continued and handled Alec the hunting rifle.

"Guess we have the cellar left." Alec said and they went downstairs.

The two of them went into the cellar and found something really strange. This cellar wasn't just a storage room for old stuff that most people used it as. Someone, probably the man they had seen on the photos, had converted it into a bomb shelter. And it seemed as if they hadn't been down there for a while. A thick layer of dust covered everything. Besides a lot of 'fuck CCCP' posters and stuff like that there were a lot of canned food that looked to have been updated since the seventies, probably with all the anthrax threats a couple of years back. The two boys walked around in the room that wasn't more than 5x5 feet big. Alec stumbled upon a box containing a smaller box of cigars and two loafs of ''Lucky Strike' smokes. Along with that he also found a zippo lighter. All of that went into the bag.

"It was a good idea to check the houses." Mark said after a while. "We should tell Steve about this."

"Yeah." Alec said and lit a cigarette. These ones were strong ones and he coughed a bit, earning himself the status of "sissy" from his friend.

"I didn't know you smoked." Mark pointed out when he saw what his friend was doing.

"I didn't, but now there's a lot of other things that will kill me both faster and better than this little bastard. It looks cool, do you want one?"

"I'll pass." Mark answered. It was right in one way, but he knew that sooner or later Alec would run out of 'Lucky strikes' and that wasn't a time when one wanted to be addicted to something.

They exited the bomb shelter and went outside to go tell Steve and the others what they had found. When they got outside they saw that everyone else finished their looting. Brandon and Ryan had found two boxes of 9mm bullets and two boxes of 12 gauge shells and some camping equipment, a good find. Terry and Carl had found a .22 rifle, some ammo and a geek, short for a nineteen year old, overweight man in a Star wars T-shirt who lived at his parents place. His name was Alexander. Jessica and Steve didn't find anything useful at all, which was bad. But they had seen a crashed van with lots of blood around it down the road. That had to be the way the people around here had been infected Steve figured.

"We found that rifle and a .38 revolver in the bedroom, some useful books and lot's of canned food that probably is eatable." Mark told the group.

"That's really good. So what do we do with the new guns?" Steve said, talking to the group as usual.

"If it's okay I'd like to keep the rifle. I'm not a to good shot though so if anyone want's it it's okay." Alec said.

"Nah, I'll stick with my twenty gauge and Carl has his twelve gauge. You found it so it's yours. You'll learn how to shoot it. Hope you don't have to use it much." Steve said. "But I think it would be a little better if Jessica had the .38 instead of the .357, the recoil is a little better I think. So now we've got two twelve gauge pump action shotguns, one double barrelled twenty gauge, a scoped winchester hunting rifle, one .357 magnum revolver, two glocks, one Colt .45, a beretta 9mm and a .22 rifle. That's a shitload of guns you know. And I'm the stupid bastard to give them to kids. And of course a fire axe." He smiled in the end.

"Do you know how to shoot?" Carl asked Alex.

"No, not really." He said.

"You'll learn." Steve said.

It took some time to split up the guns, but in the end everyone was armed to the teeth. Mark got to keep his shotgun, Alec got his rifle and his glock and more ammo to it, Carl had his shotgun and got his .357 back, Jessica got the new .38, Brandon kept his gun, so did Terry and Ryan who also took one of the glocks and Alex got the .22 rifle.

Then Mark realised that with the new member of the group and all the food they had they might need another vehicle and ran back into the house they had been checking out. When he returned he had a pair of keys with him, to the pickup. It was decided that Mark and Alec was going to drive the pickup and Alexander to ride with them. The three of them loaded all the canned food along with plenty of water into the pickup. Then the others went back to their cars and together the group drove off. First Steve, then Terry and last of them Alec.


	7. Contact

Chapter seven: Contact

All they seemed to do for the following six days was to live on the road. They never stopped in a city, they stayed away from them as much as possible. Steve's plan seemed to be to drive as much as possible and risk as little as possible, which was a good plan. They had food, water and when they needed they stopped at gas stations outside settlements like the one they had found Alex in. They didn't find anything in any of them, alive or undead, and never stayed long enough to find out.

Alec drove their car most of the time and shifted with Alex rather than with Mark. It wasn't that Mark couldn't drive, more that he didn't like to for some unknown reason. The group had to stick to the smaller roads because the highways were clogged with the cars of the people that had tried to escape the cities that morning that seemed to have been so long ago. But someone must have been infected, the cars only stood there while the once normal and once frightened people now walked around searching for warm flesh.

During the time they stopped, in the mornings and the evenings, Alec and Mark became pretty good friends with everyone else. Of course they knew Alex best, he was with them in the pickup all day. Brandon and Ryan turned out to be a couple of slackers going as easy as they could through life, until the Change as people started to refer to the day when the dead rose. Other names were the Rising, D-day and a couple of others. Terry was as the two boys had figured an ex gang member who was trying to change his destructive way of life when the apocalypse came in the way. But Marks best friend in the group, besides Alec of course, came to be Jessica. They talked about everything together. Movies they liked and didn't like, music, what subjects they absolutely didn't miss and so on. Even if the world had changed for the worse life was pretty good after all.

In the three days they had been driving around searching for others they only had to fight once. And that time the creature stood in the middle of the road and Steve was able to hit it with the car. Then he walked out and finished it with a rock. The only loss in that battle was a dent on Steve's former flawless grill.

Mark thought back to all of that while he sat besides Alec who was driving the pickup. This day was a little cloudy and he wouldn't be surprised if it rained later on. Alex was asleep for the moment, that seemed to be half of what he did. He mostly just slept, ate and talked. The two friends didn't talk, they stayed quiet and let the fatman sleep. But Alec had to slam the brakes. Mark was thrown forward and would have hit the dashboard if he hadn't used the seatbelt. Alex didn't use a seatbelt and that earned him some nosebleed and pain. The two cars in front of him had stopped. They three survivors got out and walked up to Steve and the others. Mark had to force himself not to look at Jessica, there were more important things going on.

"There's two humvees over there. Looks like the national guard." Steve said and pointed. About two hundred meters in front of Steve's car there where a roadblock, two humvees and some barbed wire. Mark didn't see any soldiers though.

"It looks abandoned." He thought out loud.

"You think we should check it out?" Brandon asked. "We talked about the need for a radio yesterday. Our chances of finding others are a lot better with a radio and if there's somewhere they are sure to have a radio it's in one of those cars."

"But why is it abandoned?" Carl asked no one in particular, probably himself. He got along a little better with everyone now, especially with Brandon and Ryan. Or at least better than with Alec and Mark. The funny thing however was that Brandon and Ryan thought the same about Carl as Mark and Alec did, that he was the weak link in the group and a bully with a stick up his ass. And as everyone know the chain is only as strong as it weakest link.

"Because they're dead." Terry said. "I'm only saying what everyone else is thinking." He added when everyone looked at him.

"We can take them, there can't be to many of them down there if there's any of them. We need a radio." Alec said.

"But still there might be infected in the area, stay on guard." Steve told the group and scanned the surroundings. They were in a forest and no one knew how many of the creatures that might lurk in the shadows.

"If we're going there everyone goes at the same time, it's safest that way." Mark said and the others nodded.

"Come on then." Ryan said and started to walk. The others followed.

"Watch your six." Steve told everyone.

They walked two by two. First Steve and Carl, then Mark and Alec checking the flanks followed by Terry and Jessica. The last pair wasn't a pair, it was the three others checking everyone's six.

Nothing happened to the crowd as they neared the vehicles. No one said a word and tried to sound as little as possible, only the steps on the asphalt and their breath sounded, other than that it was completely silent. In the movies someone would say something like '_It's quiet, to quiet_' and then something would happen, but in reality nothing happened. When the got within twenty meters of the blockade they all smelt a disgusting odour. This time no one threw up, but it was damn close that more than one of them did. It wasn't blood, vomit, shit or decomposing flesh, it was something else. It almost smelt as burnt hair, but only almost. Only Steve knew what it really was.

"What the hell is that smell?" Alec mumbled.

"Burnt flesh." Steve said and trudged on, holding his shotgun even tighter. He had been young last time, and that time it had been caused by the world's worst weapon next to nukes, napalm.

The group spread out when they reached the cars. Everyone hunched and prepared for another fight, but nothing happened. Mark was first to see where the smell came from. A smoking pile behind the cars. When he looked closer he saw what was in the pile. Bodies. There was at least twenty corpses lying there. And the smell had grown horrendous now, it was a miracle that Mark didn't throw up. Alec, Jessica, Brandon and Steve came up behind him. They only stood and looked at the pile of dead people. The charred remains was gruesome, their limbs twisted in unnatural angles. No one said anything until Alex shouted from one of the humvees.

"There's a radio here. And a note!" he shouted. That made them snap back to reality and go see what he meant with note.

When they got to Alex and Carl who stood outside on of the cars looking at a piece of paper Terry had joined up with them. He hadn't found anything, good or bad. The note said following

We're leaving this blockade now, we have done our duty. We heard on the radio that there's a group of survivors holed up outside some town called Charelstown or something. We're going there and if you are smart you are going there to. Some of us died at the very place you are standing (we burned them with the others so you won't have to worry about them) so we only needed one humvee. We stripped the others though and you wont find anything useful in them except for this radio and note. Last thing we heard from the military channels was that the white house's barricades are breached and the staff KIA. There are no government. This thing is world-wide. We also heard about rampaging gangs in the area, so be careful. I will hopefully see you in Charelstown. You can find us on channel 13.

-Skip

Alex read it out loud and everyone's hope got a little burst as they heard about the other survivors. They returned to their cars, looked up Charelstown in a road atlas they had snatched in a gas station and decided the smartest rout. They didn't dare to enter any bigger cities, no cities at all actually. Then they loaded up the radio in Steve's car, he and Carl was the only ones capable of using the advanced military thing. They drove for the rest of the day and almost made it halfway to Charelstown. In the evening they stopped in the middle of the road to rest, no need to drive of the road since there were no other cars coming. Out there in the middle of nowhere no ghouls hunted. At least they didn't attack. As they settled down the 'groups' that had formed sat down to eat a decent meal. They ate, talked and checked their supplied and the first watch was on. The first watch got to Mark and, since the drew shortest straw, Jessica. Since the group stayed away from the 'hot' areas (aka towns) watch simply meant to talk and play cards for about three others and then go kick up someone else and go to bed on the back of the pickup besides Alec. The fatman (Alex) slept inside the pickup. It felt a little gay to sleep besides his best friend, but it was better than the ground. But this night Alec had the next watch with Alex, which meant that he didn't have to sleep huddled to a guy, which was a good thing. But now there was the watch.

Since he had got the shotgun he had it slung over his shoulder all the time, unless he slept or washed up. Hygiene wasn't the best right now, but at least he felt partially clean. And when he slept or washed up he had it within arms reach. Everyone kept their guns close twenty four seven now. He still smelt of the burned bodies, or maybe it was in his mind. The others went to bed, some in their cars and some in a tent in the middle of the road, the camping equipment coming in handy. Soon everyone except for the guards slept deep, trusting the two watchers. The two of them sat on the ground and were in the middle of a game of poker, which wasn't all that exiting when only two of them playing. Mark was the superior player, back in school it practically was all he did. But sitting there talking to each other, enjoying some beer they had picked up at a raid was pretty fun. Steve didn't really care about the kids drinking beer, he believed that they knew what they could drink and could not drink and that they wouldn't drink to much, and no one did. In a situation were ones life is depending on being alert one came to not drink himself shitfaced. All in all the kids were treated as adults, they were allowed to have guns, to drink beer and have a say in anything someone suggested. The stuff they were drinking right now was some kind of Mexican beer that actually tasted pretty good. The air was colder now and Mark wore a leather jacket he had found in a staff room in a gas station they had raided. It was a little big, but it was nice and he hoped that if he got into the situation, the ghouls would have a hard time chewing through it. And as a third positive thing, it looked cool.

"Actually this is starting to get boring." Mark said. "I've won four times in a row now."

"Yeah." Jessica said and drank some beer. "You didn't pay much attention in school did you? I got a feeling of that all you did was to play poker with equal slackers. Guess it started in what, third grade?"

"Almost right. I didn't do much at all in school, and I played poker. Only that it wasn't with equal slackers, I'm one of a kind." He said. Jessica smiled.

"Sure." She said with a smile and they finished the game of poker. Mark won once again. Then Mark remembered something. He returned to the pickup where both Alec and Alex were sleeping and snoring. He looked through his bag of things, mostly clothes he had stolen at the few lonely houses they had stopped at, until he found what he searched for. When he returned to Jessica he held a box of something in his right hand. She didn't see what it was in the darkness but she saw the big smirk on Marks face. As he sat down she saw what was in the box. Cigars.

"Where did you find those?" She asked as she saw that they were Cuban.

"In the same house as the winchester and your gun." Mark answered, picked up a cigar for himself and one for Jessica. She took one and held it as if she didn't know what to do with it.

"You gonna smoke that?" He asked and lit his own.

"Yeah, it's just that I've never smoked anything else than a cigarette before." She said and let Mark light her with his zippo lighter. He had found the lighter in a gas station the day before and figured that it would come in handy, and the yellow smiley on the lighter was a little relaxing, as if some things had remained normal.

"It's not hard, just do as you've seen people do in the movies." Mark said.

"What are we celebrating?" She asked and tried to smoke a cigar as in the movies, she almost succeeded.

"Celebrating?" Mark asked.

"With the cigars I mean. Most time people smoke cigars they celebrate something." She said.

"Then I guess we're celebrating our survival so far. Unless it's someone's birthday soon. Or maybe to everyone that died." He said.

"Celebrating our survival is good enough." She said. Mark nodded

The two of them sat silent and tried to hone their cigar smoking skills as the smell of charred bodies changed into the thick smell of cigars.

"What do you think will happen when we get to Charelstown?" Mark asked after a while. He wasn't sure he wanted to stay there when they reached. But if everyone else did so would he. Life on the road was pretty good right now and he had never been a people person.

"I don't know, I think Steve want's to stay, but I don't. I think it's more dangerous to stay outside a town than to live on the road like we do right now. What do you think?" She said.

"Something like that." He answered. "I think these days have been pretty good. As long as we stay away from the cities everything is okay. I wonder how many people they gathered in Charelstown."

"Maybe ten, maybe a hundred. Since we haven't heard anything from the radio, not a single word they might be dead. Who knows." Jessica said.

"Kinda pessimistic, but still possible." Mark said. "If someone told you last week that in a week you would have been part of a rag tag group of nomads running from zombies in a lawless world where the dead walk, would you laugh at him or walk away?" He asked

"I would have thought that he was a nut or something and walked away before he started to say that I was the mother of a rebel leader in the future or something." She said and smiled.

"Like in Terminator." She nodded. "That's one hell of a movie you know. At least the best Governor Arnie ever done."

"I haven't seen it in a couple of years, but last time I saw it I was kinda scared. I thought the idea of being hunted by a mindless robot without remorse or sympathy was kinda scary."

"I mostly like the movie since it had cool action scenes." Mark answered. "Actually we are hunted by mindless zombies without remorse or sympathy right now. Almost the same thing except for the guns and the MC."

"Actually I would have laughed at someone who told me that I would be sitting besides a boy I met a couple of days ago talking to him like if he was my best friend. It's weird you know. It feels as if I can talk to you about anything and you would understand. You're a good listener."

Mark was touched by the compliment but joked it away.

"Not in school I wasn't. Never listened to anyone back there. At least not the teachers." He said and both of them laughed a little. They were quiet for a while before Jessica asked Mark another serious question.

"Do you think about your family a lot?" She asked.

"No, not really. I try to think about it as little as possible and so far I'd say that I'm doing pretty good. I think more about all my friends." He answered. "Liked them more than my parents."

"You did? Why?" She asked.

"First of they were complete losers. Dad hadn't got a job since I was three, then he divorced with mom and simply left and didn't say where when I was twelve. That's what I didn't like about him as you might understand. He was a fuckup who didn't care about his own kid and wife. Not that I would have cared about a wife like my mom. As soon as he left she simply lost the spirit to keep on. It wasn't that she broke her heart when dad left, more that she felt insulted by it. She started drinking and stopped working. She wasn't nice when she was drunk, not at all. When I was small enough to not hit back she actually hit me a couple of times. But as you see I grew and soon enough she realised that a fat fuck like her was risking a lot trying to hit someone like me. Not that I ever hit her back or something. More like that she knew that I would if she tried anything. I started to spend more time with my best friends than at home and soon Alec's and Stan's homes felt more like home than the place that I lived at. That's why it feels a lot worse to know that Stan is dead than my mother."

"Wow, a little surprising. Didn't think you grew up like that. Must have been hard." She said.

"I got pretty good at hiding it for my friends. Never talked to anyone about it. What the fuck would people think about me if they knew that my fucking mom hit me when she was drunk, and that she was drunk more often than sober. Never talked to anyone about it, not even Alec." He said. "It feels kinda weird to talk about it, but good. I've known you for about a week and I already talk about the things I didn't tell Alec who I've known since kindergarten." He said.

"Maybe that's why you talk about it with me, since you don't know me to well." Jessica said. "Guess I would have done the same thing. You're a nice guy Mark, I like you." She smiled at him. He smiled back.

"Thanks." He said. "I like you to, never thought I would talk about this shit with a girl." He joked.

The conversation was interrupted by the radio, or rather, by a man talking in the radio.

"Anyone there? There's twelve of us barricaded in the city hall. If you can get us out of here I beg you to do so. There are kids here and we don't have any food left. I repeat..." The voice told anyone who listened.

When he had finished the sentence Mark threw his cigar into the darkness besides the road and got up on his feet. First Steve thought they were under attack, but when Mark told him what had happened he got up and ran to the radio. The man still repeated the information like a mantra. Steve got into the car as the others gathered around it, Jessica had woken the others while Mark told Steve.

"We hear you." Steve said into the radio.

"What! Where are you? Are you the army?" The voice said with an eager tone. "Are you in town?"

"I'm afraid we're not the army or in town, but we'll try to do our best to get you out of there. What town are you in? " Steve told the man.

"We're in Harrisburg, if you got a road map you can find it. How many are you, there's more than a thousand of the infected outside." As soon as the man said Harrisburg Carl started to search for it in the roadmap they had in the car. It wasn't to far from their current place, only fifty miles actually.

"I'm afraid that we're not to many, only nine actually. But I'm sure we can think of something. My name is Steve by the way." Steve said.

"Please get us out of here, I'm Roy." Roy said over the radio.

"We'll do so. You'll be out of there before tomorrow night." Steve said. "We'll get right to it."

"Okay, please hurry." Roy said.

This made everyone hurry into their cars. Since they had to stay away from the big roads the fifty miles took them two hours. The town of Harrisburg wasn't a big town. It was one of those towns that one only drove past or maybe stopped at the gas station while on way to something else. They stopped outside the town and tried to make up a plan of how to do this and maybe rest a while.

"I think the best way should be to use one of the cars as a decoy. Someone should drive past the horde and get their attention and then lead them away from the city hall. It will be easy to drive away from them, they can't get to you. Who wants to be decoy?" Steve asked the group with a sarcastic smile.

"We can do that, if you guys are game." Brandon said and looked at Ryan and Terry who both gave him a 'what the hell' look and nodded. "As far as I figure it won't be so dangerous. It's you guys who are going to have it hard. First you need to find a way to get transportation, we don't have room for all those people in the cars we've got now."

"Then you guys can be decoy while we get in and grab the others." Steve said. "Is that okay with everyone?" he asked. The others nodded.

"But where the hell are we going to get cars for all those people?" Carl asked.

"We need a bus or a truck. But where can we get a bus?" Steve said.

"At a school bus maybe? It would be big enough for those people." Brandon said. "And I'll bet there's one with the keys in it at the school."

"You got a point there. So if you guys go and act decoy to get the horde away from the city hall while we go get the school bus and get the people at city hall we meet up back here and go to Charelstown. Lead them out of town and then get away from them. It's not a to complicated plan but we can make it and that's all that matters." Steve said.

"Guess that's what we're doing." Mark said. "Let's get some rest before all of this is going down."

"We'll start at dawn." Steve said and everyone except for Alex and Alec went to sleep.

Mark didn't get to much sleep. Maybe this would be the end of the group, maybe this would be an addition. It was dangerous and he didn't really know if he liked the idea of entering a town even if it was to rescue others that surely would die without their help. It was cold and heartless, but in this new world he had to be cold if he was going to live. But he wasn't the leader of the group and the others seemed to have decided to go for it. He hoped he was going to make it.


	8. Lost

Chapter eight: Lost

_Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich justice of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content._

_- Conan the Cimmerian _

As the caravan drove down the road Mark tried to focus on the task at hand. He tried to force the memory of his conversation with Jessica out of his head. He hadn't had anyone to talk to about those thing even though he had wanted to tell Stan and Alec why he simply couldn't invite them in because his mom was to drunk. And now he talked about it with a girl he met a week ago. He liked her, he really did, but if he couldn't talk about it with his closest friends, the ones he thought of as the closest thing to family members he had, why tell her? Maybe it was as she said, that he talked to her because he didn't know her that good. And she had said that she liked him, but what did she mean by that? Did she think about him like he thought about her? Did she like him like a friend? Or like a brother? If it became something out of it, what would the others in the group say? What would Steve think about it? Fucking soap opera clichés. Too many questions. Focus. But then the questions came flooding.

Fuck it. Fuck all of it. At least for now. Focus on the task at hand.

He looked at his shotgun and checked it if it was reloaded for the second time. He had some shells in his pocket, about twenty of them. If everything went alright he wouldn't have to use too many of them. If it went perfect he wouldn't have to use any. But shit like this could go wrong. Except for the shotgun and the shells he had the leather jacket and one of the cigars. He remembered Will Smiths one liner in _Independence Day_ 'when the fat lady sings' and had snatched the cigar in a hurry as he jumped into the car with the two others. Alec drove as usual and the fatman slept, as usual. Mark sat between them and everything was dead quiet except for the engine. The sun was on its way up now and the day seemed to be a beautiful one. Besides that the day wouldn't be a nice one. They where on their way into combat with the undead, and that wasn't something a nice dawn could mask. Strangely enough Mark wasn't scared. He didn't feel anything at all. He wondered what kind of people the others were. Maybe they were as good people as the ones he and Alec was travelling with now or maybe they were a bunch of dickheads and assholes. Probably only some huddled survivors not really knowing what was going on around them. But they were humans and they were alive, but they wouldn't be if they didn't save them. Was it worth it? Everyone else seemed to think so, but Mark wasn't sure about that. He and the others was about to risk everything for some people they didn't know and hadn't met before. But what if everyone reasoned like him? Then the world would have ended a lot earlier than it did. But that didn't matter now, the world had ended in a spectacular way and the things that had happened before didn't matter. Not much of it at least.

They neared Harrisburg. It was one of those towns that you drive through when you are going somewhere else. The only thing you might have done in one of those towns are taking a pause and eating some food at the diner where there always was one or two fat guys eating a hamburger and talking about news with the chef. But this time it was abandoned. Lonely. Nothing moved in the streets, no lights shone in the windows, no cars passed them.

They didn't see to many zombies on their way in, and the ones that saw them never kept up. There was signs that pointed to the school and after a while the group reached the first location. Brandon, Ryan and Terry didn't stop where they others stopped, they honked the horn and sped up to go be bait.

As the three young men drove away down the street the others got out of their cars. They didn't want to attract any ghouls with the sound of the cars. Everyone was on high alert and suspected every shadow for being a zombie. After a few minutes of walking they found a school bus. The good thing was that it was unlocked and in shape to drive. The bad thing was that the keys weren't in.

"We've got to hotwire it. Anyone else know how to do it?" Carl asked the group as he entered the bus.

"You're on your own. Didn't know that all the bad shit you were doing would pay off." Steve answered him and turned to the others. "Alec, stay here and cover him while we get back to the cars."

"Sure, it might take a few minutes though." Carl told them and started hotwiring the car.

"See you at the city hall." Steve said.

Little had they thought about the student in the school. When the first undead stumbled into the school grounds and bit someone the students in the school got killed and turned. When the whole building had turned into a tomb the ghouls didn't move on, they stayed inside and simply stood around waiting for the next meal to pass by. They lacked the intelligence to go outside and hunt prey, so they waited. The first creature picked up the scent of warm flesh and started to run at it. Soon all the others followed. The whole school was empty in a minute.

As the group was walking back to their cars the first zombie showed. It was a teacher and his face was covered in blood so that none of his features could be seen. He stood at the school entrance as a macabre guide waiting for his group to come by. Before anyone else could react or even see the creature Steve's battle hardened reflexes made him raise the gun and fire without really knowing it. The zombie was fifty meters away from the group and took the pellets in its torso. If it was a normal human he would have been killed, now it merely stopped the undead for a few seconds.

"Run!" Steve shouted and fired a second time, this time tagging the creature in the forehead.

The others started to sprint for the cars and soon there was thirty infected behind them. The thirty zombies turned into a hundred within seconds. But they where to far away to reach the survivors before they were safe and on their way in the cars. As soon as Mark jumped into the drivers seat he glanced over his shoulder to see the horde charging at them. Steve and Jessica had started their car and were on their way. Alex was a bit slower than Mark and had about five meters left until he got into the car. Then Mark realised something bad. The keys. He didn't have them and they weren't in the ignition. Alec had them. Steve and Jessica drove away down the street and had been joined by a school bus. He and the fatman where stranded.

Now the horde was a lot closer. Luckily for Mark he didn't panic. He simply dashed out of the car and started to run. Alex didn't really get what was going on and got into the car only to realise the same thing as Mark. But it was too late for him. He panicked and froze with a stupid look on his face. Soon the ghouls reached him with their fangs and bites. The first of the zombies that reached him bit down and ripped a large chunk of flesh from his throat, the second did the same to his face and the third bit down on his arm. Then he passed out to never wake up again. Some of the zombies stopped in hope of getting a chunk of flesh while most of them continued for Mark and some for Steve and the others. Mark knew he couldn't outrun them and tried to think of a solution. He was getting tired now and soon his lungs burned as never before. He had got a some hundred meters down the street now but he hadn't got further away from the horde, but on the other hand they hadn't got any closer. He looked to his left and saw that the houses door was open. He ran to the house followed by the horde, now they where getting closer. When he got inside the zombies reached the porch. Lots of them fell over as they tripped on the two feet fence that stood around the house. As soon as he was inside he slammed the door shut behind him and locked it. He didn't know if the door was going to hold but didn't count on it so he kept running and looked for the backdoor. He grabbed his shotgun as he thought he heard something on the second floor. And right he was. A creature, a woman in her early thirties and kind of good looking, stumbled down and looked straight at him. He put the shotgun to his shoulder and fired. The heave recoil slammed into his shoulder as the zombie was knocked on its back. He pumped the shotgun again and fired again straight into its evil eyes. The head exploded and covered his jeans and leather jacket in gore. He pumped again and ran over the corpse and out through the back door. He didn't see any zombies in the backyard but knew that they where on the other side of the house. He jumped over the three foot fence and over to the next backyard. He kept running even though he didn't know if the horde of undead students followed him or not. Now he got some time to think about things. He was stranded in a town with a couple of thousand undead cannibals and the others surely thought he was dead. The only thing he could do was to get to the place outside the town where they had agreed to meet. It was about two miles outside the town and about three miles from where he was now. And everywhere around him was the undead. And they could get to the city hall and pick up those people really fast, faster than he could get to the location. He needed a vehicle.

He jogged through the house and over the street without any troublemaking undead seeing him. He saw three figures down the road but they didn't spot him. He looked at the houses but couldn't see a single car, it seemed as if everyone had went to their jobs before the plague hit. Too bad. _This sucks, I should have told the others what I thought about all of this,_ he thought as he reloaded the shotgun and caught some breath. Then he slung it over his shoulder and sneaked forth on his way to his friends.

It didn't take too long before the three men acting decoy reached the city hall. The surroundings of the building was clogged with creatures, zombies. There where thousands of them crowding the streets and trying to get inside the building where their meals where. Brandon stared at the horde and didn't believe it. It felt strange to see so many people with the same objective. It was like the Metallica concert he and Ryan and some other dudes had been to a year ago. All those people only wanting to get as close to the stage/house as possible. So many minds bent on the same thing.

"That's a fuckload of zombies." Brandon mumbled.

Some of the zombies furthest away from the house turned and looked straight at their car. They started sprinting and it was as an avalanche. Soon almost all of the creatures where running straight at them. Ryan leaned his torso out through the window and raised his pistol into the air and fired three shots and gave the oncoming avalanche of zombies a pure wild west 'Yeeeha!' roar as Terry turned around and accelerated down the street followed by the throng of undead. Terry didn't drive to fast since the mission was to lead the zombies away from the building.

"Don't drive back for fucks sake!" Brandon shouted as he realised Terry was driving back.

Terry drove into another street as he too realised that he was leading them straight into the others way. The avalanche followed.

Alec noticed that he didn't see the pickup behind them as they followed Steve's car. That was bad and he hoped that nothing had happened to them. Or to Mark at least, he thought jokingly. They were probably taking another way to the city hall or something. He didn't know what to do if Mark died. Stan was dead and so was Kyle and that had scared him a lot. It had cut him off from his life before the Rising in some way. The only real friend he had left was Mark. And now if Mark was dead he really didn't know what to do. He held his glock in his hands and checked if it was full and if the two spare clips were in his pockets as earlier. When he realised that it was so he checked the winchester in the same way. It too was ready for fighting. Carl seemed to be focused on driving the car and trying to find his way to the city hall.

"Do you see them?" Carl asked him and Alec snapped back to reality.

"Only Steve and Jessica. Can't see Mark anywhere." He answered. "Hope nothing happened to them."

"Yeah, me too. To bad to lose them." Carl said and sounded really serious.

They didn't say anything for the rest of the drive. The town was dead. Doors were open and flapping in the wind, some windows where smashed, they had to evade crashed cars every now and then. A couple of weeks before the D-day Alec had done something he usually didn't. He had read a book called _The Stand_ written by Stephen King. He imagined that the barren streets from the book looked similar to this. Another piece of media came to his mind, _End of the world as we know it _by REM. He was scared, nervous and eager to get out of the car at the same time. He tried to put the thoughts about Mark and Alex out of his head by lighting a Lucky Strike. He had become pretty used to the strong cigarettes now and didn't even cough. It felt comfortable to smoke now, not that he was addicted yet, but still it was nice. So much had happened the last days. Did life have a meaning now? He was going to die some day sooner than before all of this, he didn't need to get an education to get a good job since there wasn't any jobs left, the only thing he had to graduate in was survival. He snapped back to reality a second time when Carl slowed in. He looked at the big building in front of the bus. It was the city hall.

"We're here." Carl said. This was it Alec thought and grabbed the winchester rifle and got on his feet.

Mark had jogged a few blocks in the direction he thought was the right one, he wasn't sure but trusted his male pathfinding skills. He had lost a couple of zombies by some quick turns in and out of a couple of houses two blocks away and only fired three shots. The bad thing was that the sound might alert other ghouls in the area. He reloaded the shotgun as he ran. A figure standing in the doorway of one of the houses to his right side saw him and started to sprint at him. As soon as Mark saw the creature he stopped jogging and raised his shotgun. He stopped breathing to get a better aim and fired at the creature when it was only five meters away from him. The shot impacted into it's skull and totally demolished it and sprayed the air behind it with a crimson mist. The creature took another step and fell down and leaked the rest of its brains onto the street. A week ago something like this would have been shocking, scary and disgusting, but now it was all to normal. It was weird how things changed so fast. He started to run a little faster now as the gunshot drew far more attention than what was needed. The horde from the school hadn't showed yet, it was most likely that they had lost his scent or whatever they used to track him down. But two other creatures cane sprinting out of their houses to investigate the gunshot. They where far from him now but closing in quickly. Mark pumped the shotgun and the spent shell flew out of the gun to be replaced by a new one. He took aim on the closest one, a bald male with vulture like features only strengthened by all the blood on him. Mark pulled the trigger and felt the recoil slam into his shoulder like all the times before. The time the pellets spread out a little and destroyed the everything from the neck to the forehead. Mark didn't give it another look and turned to the second one. This one was, or at least had been, a middle aged overweight woman. She looked like one of those people that could be real mean and angry at everything for no apparent reason. Like his mom. He pumped the shotgun again and fired almost a nano second after the fresh shell had been put in place. Since the zombie wasn't as close as the other one Mark hit a little low, in the kneecap of the creature. It fell down and tried to get up only to fall down again. It tried again with the same result. Mark didn't shoot it, it was a waste of ammo when he could run away from it. He ran and reloaded the shotgun. He ran another block and stopped to catch his breath. He was soaked in sweat now and really regretted skipping all those gym classes he had skipped through out the years as a slacker. A new group of undead snapped him back to the very moment. It was four, maybe five, of them and they where running straight at him. Not panicking but thinking as clear as any other day made him realise that he couldn't fight them all. So turned around and ran the other way, trying to outrun them by jumping some fences and running through some houses as he had done a couple of times earlier. As he turned around he saw that that wasn't an option, another group, this one with about ten or fifteen flesheaters in it, was charging him from the other way. There was no way out of this that included him alive and unharmed. _Last stand, my Alamo_, he thought as he raised the gun to prepare for his last fight. He fired three shots and they impacted into the small group slamming two of them to the ground only to see them get up again and one to the ground to never get up again. He fired three more shots and dropped two of the creatures which only left two. _I'm one lucky SOB_, Mark thought as he realised that there was a small chance, if even big enough to call it small, that he could get away from the creatures. He fired another shot and slammed one of the creatures to the asphalt. Now the last one was a meter away from him and lunged at him. Mark dodged the creature and slammed the butt of the shotgun into its throat. It stopped its move and it was as if it's feet was swept away from the ground. It slammed into the ground hard but managed to grab his jeans as he tried to run away from it. He struggled to get his leg away from the creature's iron grip and finally managed after what seemed to have been hours, ironical as it was it was the slippery gore from the zombie in the house that made this ones grip slide away. He gave it a kick and felt how the zombies nose was crushed under his sneaker. He started to run and glanced over his shoulder to see that the zombies behind him was about twelve meters behind him and gaining on him.

He ran left and jumped clumsily over another fence. The zombies didn't seem to care about the fence and tripped on it as the others had done earlier. But as soon as they where on the ground they got up on their feet again. But by then Mark was on the other side of the house and jumping over the fence again.

Carl drove up to the city halls entrance and managed to run down a few of the zombies that for some reason hadn't followed Terry and the others. All in all there was about five of them dangerously close and another fifteen further away. All of them were charging straight at Carl and Alec. The smashed glass doors to the city hall where barricaded with lots of tables chairs, enough to keep the undead out. Alec raised the rifle and saw the zombies ugly face in the scope. This one was a bald and fat male. Its face was stretched in a grim look of determination. Determination to get to Alec and eat him. Alec hesitated a second before he pulled the trigger. The bullet went into the zombies forehead and exited through the back of its head in a gory display of brains and blood. It had been the only one within life threatening range. He took aim to the next one. This time he didn't even care about what it looked like, he only saw the head in the scope and pulled the trigger. Click. _Click? _Alec thought. Then he remembered that it was a winchester rifle like in the western movies and pulled the lever and saw the casing fly out. Then he aimed again and fired. The zombies brain was destroyed and it died. This city hall was a big two story building with lots of windows. It seemed new. All windows on the first floor was barricaded with tables, doors and shelves. It seemed to big to be a city hall in a small town as this. And it seemed new too, to new to be in a town like this.

"Get inside!" Steve ordered and Alec turned around to see that the barricades had been taken away and that a middle aged man in a red tweed jacket standing at entrance and signalling to them to get inside. This, Alec decided, had to be Roy.

Carl stopped at the entrance and waited for Alec to run inside. Carl fired two shots at the closest zombies as Alec ran past him as he covered for Steve and Jessica to get inside. Alec ran inside and saw five people standing and looking at them with eyes glimmering with hope to be rescued. A man and a woman in their thirties holding each other as any man and wife would to for support in times as troubled as these, and he could see rings on their fingers. Then there was a man with a pair of sunglasses and a dirty jeans vest with a worried look on his face. He was holding the neck of a broken whiskey bottle as a primitive weapon. Next to him stood Roy, if it was him. And last of all there was an elderly black man dressed as a priest. He turned around to see Steve and Jessica stumble in. As soon as Carl joined the group the others stopped staring and started to grab all the tables, chairs and other things they had used to block the entrance with.

"What the hell are you doing?" Steve roared with a furious look on his face. He was a big man and his mighty words made everyone except for the man with the sunglasses step back. "We might have lost two good guys by trying to rescue you people. We're not getting stuck here with you."

"But they are outside!" The woman begged. "It's too dangerous to go out now, even with your guns!"

"Where are the others?" Steve asked in a more normal tone and didn't even care about what the woman had said and scanned the group. "You said there where twelve in here, and kids." He added as the people who now had stopped barricading the entrance. "Martin?"

The black man nodded.

"They're in there." The Roy figure interrupted and pointed down a corridor. "They're bitten and really delirious so we quarantined them. One of the creatures had hid inside the building and he attacked last night. Cassidy managed to push him out of the window on the second floor."

"BITTEN!" Steve roared even louder. "They're dead and not delirious. Let's get going."

"I fucking told you so!" The vest man burst out and looked at the woman and man with what might have been a Irish accent. Alec couldn't tell since he talked to fast, something that was very characteristic for the Irish accent. "Now lets get going."

"You Irish fuck!" The woman cried out. "My children are coming with us! You wanted to kill them you sick fuck." The woman lashed out. She didn't look like the kind of person to use such a language often.

"Let's get going now!" Steve roared. He turned to Alec. "Alec, give me the rifle." He said.

Alec threw the Winchester to Steve who grabbed it and gave Carl a look. Then he threw the shotgun to Martin and turned around and aimed at the closest zombie and fired. He kept firing and seemed to hit with every shot fired. The woman did something odd as she dashed away from her man and started to run down the corridor where Roy had pointed. The Irishman ran after but didn't catch up with her. The woman reached the door and opened it.

"Beth!" The husband screamed.

As soon as the door was opened a pair of hands reached out and grabbed the woman. Everything went chaotic. A body moving with the characteristic twitches of a zombie followed the arms. Another zombie joined the first in feasting on Beth. Two more came through the door and started to run at the Irishman who stopped and turned around in one swift move. He cursed something that only another Irishman could have understood and started to run back. More zombie came through the door, two of them were children. From there everything seemed to be happening in a blur. The husband started to run to his wife's rescue but was stopped as Martin jumped at him and slammed him to the ground and held him back. Carl joined Steve with keeping the zombies outside away from the house. Jessica drew her gun and aimed it into the group but didn't fire since she was to scared to hit the Irishman. Alec himself also drew his gun and aimed it into the corridor, he too was afraid to hit the Irishman. The zombie closest to the Irishman got closer and the Irishman turned around and stabbed the creature with the bottle in its throat. It pushed it back but nothing more. The Irishman turned around and ran away from the zombies with renewed speed and therefore out of Alec's and Jessica's aim. Alec was too freaked to aim his shots and simply fired the whole clip into the zombies. The stabbed zombie was tagged in its head and fell down and some of them behind him was stopped for a few seconds. The Irishman ran up to Jessica.

"Give me the fucking shooter!" He shouted and grabbed yanked the gun out of Jessica's nervous grip.

As soon as he held the gun he aimed it at the closest zombie and fired his first shot. It hit the creature in the heart but didn't do anything more than a hole in its chest. By that time Alec had emptied his clip and was now reloading when he saw what the Irishman was doing.

"Shoot them in the head!" He shouted to the man over the sounds of battle around him.

The Irishman got away one more shot before he understood Alec. And then he started aiming his shots . Alec got the next clip into his pistol and was now a little more calm than before. Calm enough to aim. But the ghouls where only a few meters away. He aimed his shots and together he and the Irishman killed three of the zombies. Now only the eating zombie and the two children. Alec didn't have the guts to kill children and fired the last bullet at the eating zombie. It hit it in the neck and it started twitching. The Irishman on the other hand was out of bullets too, but that didn't stop him. The closest child zombie was the older boy. He ran straight at the Irishman and got a kick in the head by a boot as price. It fell to the ground and the Irishman stepped on the zombies chest, making it unable to do anything at all except for flailing with his arms and scream. It sounded as if something inside it cracked, possibly a rib. The next shot didn't come from Alec or the Irishman, it was Steve who had turned around and fired Alec's rifle. The slug hit the running child in its left eye and it died.

"Watch the door Carl. Get the radio. We're moving out now." Steve said. Everyone obeyed his orders.

"Beth!" The husband screamed and ran over to Beth's corpse now ravaged by bites and with chunks of flesh missing.

"Get the fuck away from her!" Alec screamed and ran up to the man. On his way to the man he put a bullet in the child under the Irishman's boot. Then he ended the twitter. The man looked at him with a questioning and scared look.

"Why!" He asked. He was crying and Alec could understand him. But he didn't want to jeopardise everyone's safety. He aimed the glock at the dead Beth's head and fired. The man screamed something.

"She was going to turn into one of those things if I hadn't done that." He explained. "I'm sorry for your loss but we've got to get back to the bus."

Together the saddened group exited the building. The husband, who introduced himself as Michael, was to shocked to do anything else than to walk like a empty shell looking down into the ground. Steve, Jessica, Alec and maybe Carl was sad over that they had lost Mark and Alec and the others over the loss of Beth and the others. No one said anything as they drove out of the town to the meeting point.

Mark hadn't got very far. He had to hide from what he believed to be the horde Terry and the others had lured away. He hid in one of the houses while the thousands passed by him in the street. But now he knew that he was running out of time and that he had to get a vehicle to get there in time. Where there were cars they were either crashed or without keys. He didn't have too much ammo left and there was a chance that he wouldn't reach the others in time and therefore be on his own, so he had to save some. He didn't want to think about it now, but it was a possibility.

He looked out from his hideout and didn't see any of the zombies in the street and decided to get moving. He got out into the street and looked again, still not seeing any creatures. He jogged in what he believed to be the right way some more and kept looking for possible threats. And after two blocks he ran into two zombies. It was like in one of those western movies where the opponents looked each other in the eyes before a draw. Then the zombies started running at him. It was a long way for them to run and he was sure he had time to take down both of them. He raised the gun and prepared to fire but was interrupted by something weird.

A tall figure dressed in black biker clothes, leather jacket and pants and a dirtbike helmet entered the scene. And he wasn't unarmed, he held something as weird as a katana long sword. It was a man, Mark could see that by the body, the movement and the body language. It looked like a male version of Uma Thurman in _Kill Bill._ He stepped out between Mark and the two zombies and turned to face the zombies. They ran right at him and he didn't flinch, he only raised his sword and pointed it to the two zombies. _Who the fuck is that stupid fuck? _Mark thought as looked at the swordfighter and the two zombies.

"Get down and I'll shoot them!" He screamed to the man. The man didn't answer or do anything else.

Mark didn't want to hit the crazy man and couldn't get a clear shot of the ghouls. The two of them came closer, one of them was two meters ahead of the last one. As it reached the man he side-stepped and slashed with the sword in a blurry move. The blade hit the zombies scalp and separated a part its head from the rest. It fell down and leaked some grey brains onto the street. The other zombie reached the man and tackled him to the ground. He dropped the sword in the fall and it bounced away from him. But somehow the man managed to grab a hold of the creatures neck and held the face, or more importantly the mouth, away from him. He had to use both hands to keep the creature away. Mark ran closer to the man and the zombie. The unknown man and the undead creature had reached a draw as the man couldn't get away from the zombie and the zombie couldn't get any closer. When Mark was two meters away from the fighters he aimed the shotgun and fired. The zombie was hit in the shoulder and thrown backwards away from the creature and spraying the unknown man with thick black blood. It started twitching, the pellets apparently destroyed the spine or something. The man was up on his feet in seconds and retrieved the sword. He walked over to the twitching zombie and stabbed the blade into its forehead. Then he turned around and took of his helmet. It revealed a red haired man with a weeks beard and the strong-chinned features that most people associate with a comic book hero. He looked to be nineteen or twenty and had a wondering look on his face.

"Who're you?" He asked.

"I'm Mark and who the hell are you?" Mark asked back. Something about the man made Mark think that he had seen him before. He just couldn't place it.

"The name's Gerald. I thought I was the only living guy in this state. What are you doing here packing that big shotgun like if you were G.I Joe himself. You can't be more than seventeen."

"I'm only sixteen actually. Where have I seen you before?" Mark said.

"You've seen me before? In the _Daredevil _stunts on the net maybe?" He said and something clicked in Mark.

"That's where I saw you. You're one of those crazy dudes in those videos on the net!" He almost shouted. "I've seen a lot of your stuff. The pit fighting, the GTA's and all that other stuff."

"You're like the first person I've ever met in real life who knows about that. Cool. But I think there's more important stuff right now than to talk about my former hobbies. Let's get inside." Said Gerald.

The two of them walked into the small house to the left. It looked as abandoned as all the others but the attic was stuffed with canned food, bottles of various liquids and some clothes. As well as all the other things that dwells in all attics, boxes of old stuff and things like that. In the middle there was and open space where a pillow and a blanket. As soon as both of them got up there Mark told Gerald the story about how he had ended up where Gerald stepped in.

"Dude, that's some story." Gerald said as Mark finished.

"The thing is that I need to get back to my friends before they leave." Mark told Gerald. "Do you have a car we can use."

"What do you mean with 'we'? And no. I've got something else though." Gerald said.

"I don't think you want to be sitting here until the ghouls see you are here and sieges the place. And besides, it would be nice to have someone like you in our group, a celebrity." Said Mark.

"Got that right. Let's pack and get out of here then. Chop chop." He said and started to pack.

The packing didn't take long, Gerald simply put the rest of the canned food, some of the water and some other things in a backpack and they were done. The two survivors went downstairs and looked for any sign of a zombie. The street was empty except for the two corpses and a spent shell. They continued on to the garage. It clearly wasn't Gerald's house, it was his parents and he had been on a visit when the shit hit the fan. The parents had been working when all of it happened and when Gerald woke up around noon he turned on the TV and saw what was happening. Then he did two things, put all useful items in the attic and retrieved the samurai sword from his room. For some reason it had been sharpened in the past and was like a razor. In the garage the 'something else' turned out to be a new dirtbike.

"This baby is getting us out of here." Gerald said. "Take the backpack, it's easier if you have it. The bad thing however is that I don't have another helmet. Tough luck."

Mark slung the backpack and the shotgun over his shoulder.

"Since I hope you're not planning on crashing I don't think I'll need a helmet." Mark told him.

"Take these at least, it's a bitch to get something in your eye at that speed." Gerald said and handled him a pair of sunglasses.

"I've seen you drive before, that stolen MC in one of your videos." Mark said and remembered the video where Gerald got a stolen MC to make almost 200 Mph hunted by the cops on a highway.

"You mean when I stole that bike?" Mark nodded. "That was mighty cool you know."

"Whatever." Said Mark and almost jumped a feet as Gerald kicked the bike to life. Hearing the engine for a whole ten seconds almost gave Mark a headache. Mark got behind Gerald and the two drove away in what Mark believed to be the right direction.

The bus was quiet until the Irishman broke the silence.

"So, since I take it that we're going to travel together for a while an introduction wouldn't be out of place. I'm Cassidy." He said.

"I'm Alec and the guy driving is Carl. The two others you saw was Steve and his daughter Jessica." Alec answered the Irishman.

"The priest over there is Martin." He said and pointed at the priest who didn't even look up. "The man over there is Michael and the other man is Roy." Roy was the only one to look up as his name was called.

"So, what's your story, how did you end up in the city hall?" Alec asked. He needed to talk to forget about what might and most possibly had happened to Mark, his oldest friend.

"How I ended up in the city hall? I was on my way through the town when my car broke down. I slept the night at the hotel only to wake up by screams and gunfire. I looked out the window and saw what was happening. First I thought it was some kind of riot, like the ones in Belfast in the seventies. The strange thing however was that the rioters were running around eating and killing anyone they saw. No throwing stones at policemen at all. I flipped on the radio and heard that people from everywhere was going crazy and killed people. So I figured that some others, police and such, where there and ready to protect the citizens of this great nation." The last words were smothered in sarcasm. "As soon as we saw that the things ran rampage in the streets we barricaded ourselves and figured that some military or other survivors were going to save us. Then we waited. That's about it. What about you guys, you work as an paramilitary survivalist team or something."

Alec chuckled at the remark and told the Irishman his story.

"That's some story. Quite an adventure actually. This is a new world order you know." Cassidy said.

"Yeah, before all of this dead people killing living people wasn't normal, it is now." Alec said.

"Maybe it's Armageddon. The end of the world. I remember something from the bible about the dead walking at Armageddon and punishing the sinners, which seems to be pretty much everyone. What do you think father?" Cassidy said.

"I don't believe in god any more. If god existed he never would have punished man with something like this, and if he exits I say fuck him cause he's a sadistic son of a bitch." Martin said.

The harsh words from the priest stopped the conversation and everyone sat quiet the rest of the way.

Terry, Ryan and Brandon arrived to the assembly point first. They had lost the group of zombies behind them long ago and now didn't have anything to worry about. All of them hoped that the others were all right and that there hadn't been any trouble with the new people. It had been scary back then when about two and a half thousand undead cannibals chased them, but it was over now. As soon as Terry turned of the engine all three men got out to stretch their legs. Then they simply sat down, ate some of the food they had in the car (most of the food was in the pickup) and tried to flush the adrenaline out of their systems. It took some time but after a while the thrill was over.

"What kind of people do you think we're rescuing?" Brandon asked Ryan while Terry was away taking a piss.

"It's that Roy dude and hopefully a lot of hot chicks. But I don't think so, you've seen a fair amount of slashers through the years and you know as well as I that hot chicks dies first in the movies and right now I wouldn't be to surprised by something like that." Ryan answered.

"So you're saying that we've ended up in some b-horror flick?" Brandon said. "Like if we're going to die in agony until there's only one or two left of us and then the end credits are going to roll down the screen? "

"No, not that we've been sucked into a b-movie like in another bad b-movie. I'm only saying that everything has turned out like in one of those bad zombie movies. Only that the real ones run." Ryan answered. It sounded as if this was something he had thought through the last days.

"That's some weedy shit you know. Let's talk about something else." Brandon said.

"Like what? At least one could talk about TV in the old days. And god do I miss weed." Ryan said.

"You already talk about 'the old days' as if it was an lost era. It wasn't more than a week ago you know." Brandon said.

"But a lot of things has happened. Life has changed a lot-"

"And nothing is normal anymore." Brandon cut him of.

"That's wrong you know. One can't say that nothing is normal anymore, it's only that normal has changed into this. This is what ordinary life is now." Said Ryan.

"You've got a point there." Brandon said and was quiet.

The two men were quiet when Terry returned and then they continued being quiet. Everything was quiet. The wind blew through the leaves of the tree that gave the car and three men shade. The wind wasn't as chilling as they usually were at this time of year, it was nice. Everything was nice and for a moment all three of them managed to forget about the new 'normal' life. Until the faint sound of an engine was to be heard. It wasn't a car engine, that they were sure of. It wasn't weaker or louder, just different from a car.

"What the hell is that?" Terry asked.

"Don't know, sounds like a dirtbike or something." Brandon answered.

"Get your guns ready, this guy might be unfriendly." Terry said and drew his gun.

All three got their guns out, checked them and prepared for whatever was coming at them. The sound grew louder, closer. The men got more tense, preparing for the worst case scenario. It might be one of those gangs the note from Skip had told them about. They waited for the possible threat to show. And it did show. And it wasn't what the three men had thought it was going to be.

First off it wasn't a single man. It was two persons. The first was wearing black leather pants and jacket with a helmet that didn't show his face. He had a sword on his back for some reason. The second one was a guy, a broad shouldered guy, wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses. Around the leather jacket he had two strips of clothing. Like Mark. Mark.

"It's Mark for gods sake!" Brandon shouted as soon as he recognised the young man.

"What the hell is he doing on a dirtbike? Where's the pickup? And where's the others?" Terry said.

"We'll get answers to that soon enough." Brandon said.

Mark and the unknown driver had seen the car and the three men and drove up to them and stopped. Mark got of the bike first and said hi to his friends.

"What happened? Where are the others?" Terry asked.

"I don't know where anyone else is, except for Alexander. And he's dead." Mark answered.

"What happened?" Ryan asked.

"There where infected in the school, lots of them. Carl and Alec stayed in the school bus and hot-wired it while we got back to the cars. The zombies saw us and started chasing us. Steve and Jessica got into their car and drove away while I had to wait for the fat... Alexander. Then I realised that Alec still had the keys and it was a little late to run back and ask for the keys. Alex was run down by the zombies and I hid in one of the houses before moving on. After running a few blocks I met up with this guy." He pointed at Gerald. "And we took his dirtbike to meet with you guys here."

"So you don't know what happened to the others?" Ryan asked and Mark shook his head.

"Guess we'll have to wait then." Brandon said.

Gerald took of the helmet and both Brandon and Ryan recognised him directly.

"You're that guy on the Daredevil videos on the net. You're fucking crazy!" Brandon shouted. The words 'fucking crazy' wasn't meant as an insult and wasn't taken as such. Gerald smiled.

"Thanks. In one hour I've meet more people that recognise my videos than in the last six months." He said.

"What about that dirtbike, how good is it?" Brandon asked.

And Gerald and Brandon engaged in an discussion about dirtbikes, motorcycles and almost everything that could transport someone from A to B with and engine. Except for tanks which they knew very little about. The others were eager to hear Marks story with more details. And then Mark remembered the cigar. He searched his pockets and found it. While he told the others about his adventures he lit the cigar and shared with the others. The mission was completed and everyone was alive and kicking, not counting Alex. And within half an hour the sound of an engine, bigger than a car, was to be heard. As it came closer a car engine was heard too. And in a few minutes both Steve's car and a school bus entered the meeting place. And from the bus Carl, Alec and four other men came. Steve and Jessica was alright too. And everyone was shocked when they saw Mark standing besides the others smoking his cigar and smiling at the shocked faces of the others. Mark started to talk before anyone else said anything.

"You forgot to give me the keys fuckface." He said and looked with blame in his eyes at Alec.

Both boys looked at each other for almost a minute before they started laughing as crazy men. Then they shared a hug, a manly one, and kept laughing. The others looked at them and thought that they had lost it.

"Where's Alex?" Alec asked when the laughing had stopped.

"They ran him down. He didn't make it." Mark said to his friend.

Alec didn't answer, this was all his fault. He felt in his pocket for the keys and retrieved them. His forgetfulness had cost them the life of a man. Steve walked up to him.

"Forget it. He's gone. Don't think about it." He told Alec. "We got four-"

"Five, and I chose to go with you." Gerald interrupted jokingly.

"Five people today. It's always bad when someone dies, but at least something good happened today. Try not to thing about it." Steve continued.

"The pickup is back in Harrisburg. Most of the food is in the pickup. And a lot of ammo too. We need that pickup." Mark said.

"I know. But how do we get it?" Steve said.

"What if we do this all over again? But skips forgetting the keys of course?" Brandon said.

"You mean a decoy?" Steve asked. "You wanna go again?" He asked the three men.

"Sure." Brandon asked before Ryan or Terry could interrupt him. They didn't look like if they were going to.

Steve turned around and looked at the new group members and Carl and Jessica.

"You guys stay here while we go get the pickup." Steve said. "Mark, Alec, get into my car. Brandon, Terry, Ryan, go be decoy." It sounded as if he was used to give orders.

"Seems you haven't lost your touch." The priest remarked. He got a glance from Steve but nothing was said.

The three men drove away first and five minutes later Steve, Mark and Alec got into Steve's SUV and drove off from the others. The drive was quiet. Until Alec broke the silence.

"How do you know the priest?" Alec asked Steve.

"I haven't met him in a long time. Last time was in the last days of the war." Steve answered. He wasn't to glad to talk about that Mark noted.

"What war? Nam?" Alec asked.

Steve nodded. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Sure, just curious."

The silence ruled the rest of the drive. The city of Harrisburg was as dead as before. On their way to the school they didn't see a single zombie. Terry and the others had done a good job. The arrived to the school and Steve drove up to the pickup who stood where they had left it. A few meters away from it Mark could see a pool of blood and some flesh that only in some way resembled of a human. It's head seemed to work and as soon as it saw the two boys it started to hiss at them.

"That's Alex." Mark told Alec.

"That's fucking disgusting!" Alec almost shouted as he saw the hissing remains of his former companion.

"Get the car started. I've got to do something." Mark told Alec who got into the car and started it.

Mark walked up to the pile of flesh that was Alex. He looked at 'it' one last time before raising his shotgun and aiming at the bloody forehead. The face hadn't been damaged much. It still looked like Alex but with a loot of blood in his face. But he looked at the rest of the battered body and didn't see any resemblance of the man he once knew, except for the clothes. He pulled the trigger and saw the face disappear in a crimson fog. When the fog disappeared there wasn't much left of the head. But Mark slung the shotgun over his shoulder and leaned down to rip a piece of Alex shirt. It wasn't hard since all that remained of it was shreds. He tied it around his arm, below Kyle and Stan's. All three were deep red and looked like primitive bandages on his jacket. But they were memories. He picked up the .22 rifle and returned to the pickup and got in.

"You're morbid, do you know that?" Alec told his friend jokingly.

"Shut the fuck up. If you didn't forget the keys this wouldn't have happened. Just follow Steve." Mark lashed out at Alec who got quiet, really quiet.

They didn't say anything else on their way back.


	9. Safety

Authors note: I changed the first chapter, it was flawed. And about the rating. I'm far to lazy to change it. And besides, I don't know how the ratings in USA work, I'm from Sweden. But as I see it everyone who reads Dawn of the Dead flicks can take a little gore. If you don't associate zombies with death, gore, headshots, bad language and apocalypses you're in my opinion a moron.

And while watching Viva la Bam (great tv-show) last night I noticed that there's a town in reality called Harrisburg. I didn't know this as I came up with the name so if you think that the town of Harrisburg in the story is based on reality you're wrong. That's all for now.

Chapter nine: Safety

Before they drove any further they rested for a while. Steve gave Martin the .22 rifle and Cassidy got Carl's revolver. The ones who were hungry ate, the thirsty drank and the tired ones slept. For a moment everything was like a picnic with guns. Mark was tired, thirsty and hungry. He ate and drank but didn't sleep. Too much adrenaline in his blood to let him. He just sat around and listened to Steve and the others trying to find the best way Charelstown. And when that was done after about two hours the caravan rolled out. Gerald somehow got his dirtbike inside the bus and rode in it with Cassidy who drove and the other new additions to the group. Jessica somehow managed to talk Steve into letting her ride with Alec and Mark.

The drive into Harrisburg had got them further away from Charelstown than they had before and Steve calculated that it would take about another hour if they sticking with the small roads, not that they had another option. Mark hadn't talked to Alec since he lashed out at him earlier and the mode in the pickup was tense. Jessica sat in the middle between Alec who drove and Mark who looked out the window. Mark actually was sorry for what he had said to Alec, but he was to stubborn to say that he was sorry. All of it was fucked up he concluded. He was tired and figured that trying to sleep wouldn't be too bad. He closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing. After a few minutes it kicked in.

Alec wasn't pissed. What Mark had said was right. But it wasn't nice to say something like that. He had thought that Mark was a little smarter than to say something like that. He didn't know what to say so he didn't say anything. He focused on driving. He was going to wait it out, that was what he was going to do. They would forget about it soon and then everything would be normal again. Or at least as normal as things could get in a world were the dead walked the earth.

Jessica didn't know anything about why the car was so quiet. Most times when she had talked to Mark and Alec they seemed to be best friends and always talkative. Now they didn't even look at each other. But as far as she figured it Mark was a little pissed at Alec for forgetting the keys and almost killing him. But from what she had heard from Mark before the Roy found them on the radio she had learnt that they were like brothers. And siblings got over everything in time. At least that what she believed. She didn't' know since she never had a brother or a sister except for Carl. She never ha a friend as close as Mark and Alec was. Back in school she had had a lot of friends, but none of them had been as close as a sister. When no one else talked she didn't feel for breaking the silence. She turned and looked at Mark. He was asleep. He had leaned back into the seat and had found a comfortable place leaning somewhere between the seat and the door. He had his sunglasses on and the sun shone in from the window and made him look cute. He hadn't shaved for a week and had got a little scruff in his face. He looked like if he hadn't got a care in the world when he was asleep. But still he had one hand on the shotgun. He always had the big shotgun close. A few days ago the picture of a sixteen year old boy sleeping in a car with his shotgun would have been a shock to anyone Jessica thought, now she wasn't the least bit surprised about sitting besides a guy with a shotgun in a car where the driver were packing a hunting rifle. She had her own revolver in one of her pockets and tried not to think about it. Or at least what it had been used for the last days. Before all of this she had shot with pistols a few times with Steve and Carl and became pretty skilled at it. Not as skilled as Steve or Carl, they had military training, but good enough to hit what she aimed at most times. And that was coming in handy now.

They stopped before they reached Charelstown. Since no one had seen more than a single zombie for the last few miles Steve choose to stop and sleep for the night at a lone house that stood by the road. As the caravan drove up to the house two zombies charged out of the house. An elderly couple so disfigured by their wounds that it took time to see which of them that was man and woman. Carl took down the first one with a load of buckshot in the torso that apparently destroyed its spine or something. It started twitching and wasn't a threat anymore. The Irishman got out of the bus first and faced the second ghoul with his revolver. His first shot hit the creature in the torso and stopped it long enough for Cassidy to put it down with another shot that completely demolished its face. Carl got out of his car and finished the twitcher. Then the two fighters dragged the corpses out of sight and burned them.

It was a two story house with a barn on the backyard. As soon as everyone got out of their cars the group choose guards by the classic shortest straw lottery. This time it fell on Carl and Cassidy to take the first shift, then Jessica and Martin and last of all Alec and Steve. While Carl and Cassidy took watch sitting on the roof of the bus the others ate dinner spread over the house. The power was still on in the house and the group tried to find the emergency broadcast. There wasn't anything else than static. While everyone else was searching the house for anything of value Mark snatched Alec to talk to him about earlier that day.

"Alec!" Mark said and his friend turned around.

"What?" Alec muttered.

"I want to apologise for what I said about Alex before. It wasn't you fault, everyone forget things. At least he didn't die for a bad thing, we rescued a lot of people that would have died if we hadn't saved them." Mark said. Alec looked at him for what seemed to be hours.

"I'm sorry too." Alec said.

"What for?" Mark wondered.

"Mark, I'm sorry." Then Mark got it and started laughing. Alec Joined in.

"It's sick to quote Shaun of the Dead in this situation you know. But still funny." Mark said.

"I know, but it felt so right." Alec answered.

"Friends?" Mark asked and reached out his hand.

"Friends." Alec answered and shook his hand. Then they started searching the house with the others. Mark finished the conversation with a simple fact.

"It's not worse than when I put your number on that gay site and four people called you is it?" Mark asked.

"No." Alec said and remembered the 'joke'.

When they had searched the whole house they hadn't found many useful things. Not much food, no weapons and no ammo. Mark looked through the books the old couple had and his eyes locked on a book called _On the Road_. He had heard about it somewhere and that it was the start of the beatnik movement, a subculture that he most likely had been a part of if he had been around in the sixties. He put it in his bag. When the scavenging was done the group sat around and talked about nothing in particular. They didn't sit in the kitchen as the all to normal coppery smell of blood as well as the pool of it in the room was to appealing.

Sitting around and talking was the most normal thing that had happened in the last week. Gerald talked about his adventures that he had filmed in his videos and how he got the ideas to it. Sometimes it was pure coincidence that he stumbled upon the gap between two roofs that looked crossable with a dirtbike. In other cases he thought it through first. Cassidy talked about his home on Ireland, a small village on the border between the British part and the "real" Ireland. He also showed his skill in languages as he talked in Italian, German, Irish, Spanish and two words of Russian. Martin and Steve walked away from the others and sat and talked about memories that wasn't for the others. Pretty much Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket with the effects of Saving Private Ryan. The group split up as Carl and Cassidy went outside to sit on the bus and take their shift. They had an old boombox that they had found in the house and played Credence Clearwater Revival loud enough to attract any undead in the area. It was better that they charged the two on the bus they couldn't reach than to stumble inside and kill the sleeping ones. Mark went to bed about half an hour later and started to read _On the Road_ with a flashlight. He got to chapter four when Alec started complaining about the light from the flashlight. He slept the whole night and didn't wake up when Alec got out to take watch.

Mark woke up when Alec kicked him a little to hard on his right arm.

"Ouch! What time is it?" He asked.

"About nine in the morning. We're leaving now. Did we wake you up?" Alec said.

"Why would you do that? And no." Mark answered.

"Two zombies stumbled here on my shift. We didn't see them or hear them at all until a bloody hand with four fingers slammed on the bus. I almost crapped myself before I realised what was happening. Shot one of them with the pistol and Steve took care of the other. Damn you sleep hard. Two gunshots just outside and you sleep on." Alec said.

Mark got up and grabbed his things and followed Alec outside. It was a nice and sunny day with only a few white clouds on the sky. Where the two corpses they had burned the day before there was a new fire. It smelled horribly. The caravan drove away and this time Alec, Mark and Jessica got last. From here it didn't take long to reach Charelstown.

"What happened yesterday?" Jessica asked the two boys. "It almost seemed as if you were angry at each other."

"I'm probably saying this because of my total lack of social skills, but mind your own business." Mark told Jessica.

"I was a little mad at Mark because he told me that I screwed up with the car keys. We got over it last night." Alec told her.

"Okay." Jessica said and they kept driving.

Steve was first in the caravan and when they came close enough to read the signs that said how close it was to Charelstown the radio started talking, or a man on another radio at least. It was Skip himself and he guided them to the safehouse from the dead. Of course no one in the other cars heard anything of Steve's conversation with Skip and simply followed Steve. As Alec drove over a hill Mark saw what the safe place was. It was gigantic mall. There were people on the roof and some of them ran downstairs to get others as they saw the caravan. More people joined them and soon a whole crowd stood and watched the group as the drove over the almost empty parking lot. They stopped in front of the entrance and got out. It was a double glass door and beyond it Mark saw that a group of men were approaching. At least twenty of them with all kinds of guns. Three of them had military uniforms and assault rifles. They reached the doors and unlocked them and let the group in. Some of the men inside kept their weapons trained on the new people.

"I'm Skip and I'm kind of the leader in this mall. The rules are as following: Don't play with the safety of people in the mall and don't fight inside the mall or we'll kick you out. That's as far as we've got in making rules here. Take whatever you want from the stores, we've got more than enough. And before I forget it, Welcome." One of the men in uniforms told Steve. He was young, maybe twenty five or a little older but seemed to be a good leader.

"Thanks." Was the only thing Steve said.

The mall was built as a big pentagon with three floors. It had one entrance at every side and the parking lot stretched around it. In the middle of the mall there was a 'town square' with a fountain in the middle. The newcomers walked through the mall and decided to make one of the shops their home. They chose one of the clothes shops and started to carry their things inside. The shop was fairly big and everyone in the whole group got their own place. Mark and Alec set up their things in one of the corners where most of the jeans were. Mark decided that when he was done carrying the things in he was going to get himself some new clothes and wash up, he smelled like a animal or worse. People looked at them as they walked past them. There were all kinds of people in the mall. All "races" and all kind of ages. Some were kids in Marks age, a few were senior citizens and everything in between. But as Mark and Alec made their last run and only carried the books and some of the food Mark heard a guy in his own age tell a not to attractive girl with big tits something that he didn't like.

"Those guys think they're so cool with they're guns and shit. Bet they never saw a single of the things as close as you and I." He said.

Mark and Alec both heard it and put their stuff down and walked up to the guy and the girl.

"What the fuck did you just say?" Mark asked in a calm tone that made it clear that he was thinking about beating the guy into a bloody pulp. The guy stood up and looked Mark in the eyes. He was shorter than Mark and Alec and had a hunting knife tucked in his pants.

"I said that you two think you're badasses just because you've got guns. I've got a knife and I'll do fine with that. I also said that you probably haven't been as close to the 'zombies' as I have." He said.

"Ok. So you've been closer than this?" Mark asked and pointed at his leg where the dried blood from the zombie in the house had painted the blue jeans rust red. "Can you guess what that is? It sure as hell isn't mud. It's a mix of brains and blood that came from one of those dead fucks that surprised me. And if you knew jack shit about them you should know that you've got to be fucking crazy to go up against one of the zombies with just a knife."

The boy just looked at Mark.

"I bet you killed a lot of them, that you're a real badass yourself." Alec started. "The first of the zombies that I killed was my best friends that got infected. Do you know how it feels to put down your friends like the rabid animals they turned into? I actually don't think you've seen any of them closer than from the roof of this mall. So until you have seen as much as we have, fuck off!"

Then Mark and Alec turned around and picked up their stuff and walked away.

"I think he learned something today." Mark said.

"Yup." Alec agreed.

When the two boys reached the shop that had turned into their home the others waited for them. Steve had borrowed enough beer from a liquor store in the mall and handled them out to the group.

"Cheers for a job well done group!" Steve told them. "Since this weird catastrophe started everyone in this group has done excellent. We are alive and in a safe place, that's as good as it gets in these times. I've seen trained marines do a lot worse in combat than you guys. And I can guess what most of you are going to do. When I go to talk to Skip and the others you guys are going to go down to that booze store and bring back as much as you can carry and then get as drunk as you can. I don't see what's wrong in that. I, Roy and Martin are going to see Skip about the situation in the mall so all I can say is that you don't fuck this up. We don't want to get kicked out of this mall because you get to drunk and fucks something up. So put the guns away without the ammo in them before you start drinking. We're safe in here."

Everyone drank beer, complimented each other on the good job they had done and was all around happy. When that was done the group split up. Roy, Martin and Steve went to Skip while the others, except for Michael, decided to celebrate the safety. First the whole group walked to the liquor store and asked the two people who lived in it if they could take some of the booze. The man said that it was okay and the youngsters grabbed as much booze they could carry. Mark settled with six Corona (Mexican beer) and a bottle of tequila, he was going to be shitfaced tonight. Alec took a bottle of tequila and one bottle of vodka, more than enough. Ryan, Brandon, Gerald and Terry grabbed so much beer they could carry, and that was a lot. Carl and Jessica decided to share a bottle of bourbon. Actually it wasn't deciding as much as Carl not letting Jessica drink to much, half a bottle of bourbon was still a lot but probably not as much as she would drink if he didn't stop her. He wasn't intending on letting her drink half the bottle either, she wasn't that big or used to drink. Cassiddy found some very dark beer and a bottle of whiskey. Together they walked back to the clothes shop and settled down. Michael was gone. And then the drinking started.

Mark started with a little tequila and a beer. Alec opened the vodka and shared a little with Terry, Ryan and Brandon. Jessica drank a little bourbon under Carl's watching eye. Gerald finished the first beer in a single sweep and started his second. Cassidy watched Gerald finish the beer and challenged him on a drinking contest. After half an hour everyone was drunk, more or less. Mostly more.

"Dude! We need some music!" Alec shouted. "Mark, come with me and get a boom box that works!"

"Whatever." The semi-drunk Mark said and got up. He still hadn't changed pants or washed up.

When Alec stood at the entrance to the store he turned around.

"Any suggestions of music?" Alec asked the group.

"Credence." Carl said.

"Sex Pistols!" Cassidy shouted.

"Guttermouth!" Brandon shouted

"Hell yeah!" Ryan agreed.

"Metallica it is." Mark said and dragged Alec out of the store.

The two boys stumbled through the mall and realised that most people had went to bed. At least they weren't to be seen. Mark drank some tequila and Alec realised that he had had enough vodka and drank some more. After about fifteen minutes they finished what should have been a five minute walk to the other side of the mall and the electronic store. It was open and seemed abandoned. The two boys started searching for a cdplayer with decent sound. But then the lights were turned on and five people looked at the two drunken boys.

"What the hell are you doing here?" A really big guy asked them. He had a baseball bat in his hands and seemed to be a little older than Mark.

"We're looking for a Cdplayer, that's all." Alec said.

"Over there." The big guy pointed.

Alec went to get it while Mark scavenged some CD's. Metallica, Sublime and Andrew WK among others. When he had filled his pockets with the CD's he turned and looked at the five people watching him. First there was the boy Alec had told to fuck off, then the girl with big tits, then the big guy, another girl that was semi-attractive and last of all another guy that looked a lot like a monkey. He drank some more tequila and looked at the group.

"Want to come to our party?" He asked.

"I'll stay here." Fuck off boy said. He looked at Mark and Alec with a not to nice look in his eyes.

"Me too." Tit girl said.

The others said sure. They introduced themselves as Tim (big guy), Maria (the girl) and Chris (monkey boy). Alec returned with what he thought of as a decent Cdplayer. The bigger group walked back and Tim had to insist that Mark and Alec shouldn't sing _Bad Moon Rising_ even if it was the ultimate drunken song (A/N: I know that from experience.). Back home Cassidy was entertaining the group with songs and stores from his beloved Ireland. Everyone was relived when

Mark started some Andrew WK and introduced the guests. Then he drank more beer and tequila.

"Steve was here. He told us to be a little more quiet and not to cause any trouble. Then he left." Gerald told them.

Another hour and everyone was too damn drunk. Even Jessica. Alec had thrown himself over Maria and was clearly and badly hitting on her. It wasn't going too good, he was too drunk to pronounce most words. Mark spent some time speaking to Gerald about his adventures, some time with Ryan and Brandon talking about good pot and a lot of time with Jessica talking about nothing important. Carl went to sleep when he was too drunk. After a while of hitting on Maria Alec went to Brandon and Ryan for some advice.

"What should I do now?" Alec asked the two young men.

"Put your hand on the tits and she's yours. It has worked for me on a lot of girls." Brandon said with a smirk on his face.

"Ok." Alec said and walked back to Maria.

"You think he's gonna do it?" Ryan asked Brandon.

"I think he is, and I don't think she'll like it." Brandon answered. "Two beers on that he's gonna do it and that she wont like it."

"I'll take that bet. But I bet on that she's drunk enough to like it. It's almost unbelievable how many times that trick works." Ryan said.

"It never works, that's what's so fun." Brandon asked.

"It does work. At least for me." Ryan said.

"No way!" Brandon shouted. "In that case, go do it to Jessica and se how good your trick is."

"Fuck no! First off Steve, Carl and loverboy Mark would kill me. Second, she's too young. I'm not a friggin ped you know." Ryan almost screamed. Actually he did, the music was pretty loud.

"I always thought you were. And if you don't dare that, then do it to the next girl in our age without homicidal father/cousins/soon-to-be-boyfriends." Brandon told him.

"Ok. The bet is on." Ryan said and the two men shook hands.

Cassidy and Gerald talked a lot about common interests. They seemed to like the same things, drinking, smoking and sleeping. A few times Terry added in on the conversation every now and then.

Alec never got the opportunity to follow up Brandon's advice. When he got back to where Maria had been she had disappeared. A little saddened he walked out from the shop and sat down at the fountain outside the shop. It was one of those feet deep fountains with lights in it and it was calming. He knew that he was drunk, what he didn't know was how drunk he was. Mark stopped talking with Jessica and walked up to his oldest friend and sat down besides him at the fountain.

"Are you any drunk Alec?" He asked.

"A little, I think. How About you?" Said Alec.

"I'm drunk, that much I know." Mark said. "How did it go with that girl?"

"They left. I didn't have time to do as Brandon said." Alec said.

"What did he tell you to do?" Mark asked.

"To feel her boobs or something. He said it would work." Alec said.

Mark laughed a little at him. "It wouldn't have worked, I think." He said. "And besides, did you want to get together with her?"

"No, of course not. Why the hell do you think I almost touched her tits?" Said Alec.

"You wont say that tomorrow. Then you'll see what a mistake you almost made." Mark told his friend.

"Fuck you man!" Alec said and pushed Mark a little. Mark lost balance and fell into the fountain, but not before he grabbed Alec's shirt and dragged him with him into the cold water. They wrestled for a while before getting up and sitting down at the same places as before.

"So, how did it go with Jessica?" Alec asked after a while.

"Good, got inside her top." Mark answered.

"Really?" Alec doubted.

"No" Mark answered.

"You wished you did though." Alec said.

"Yup." Mark said.

They laughed for a while before starting to walk inside. Inside the music had stopped and the ones who had found their sleeping places had done that, the others had fallen asleep where they sat. Gerald was lying on the counter and snored. Brandon was lying on the floor. Jessica leaned against the counter and looked at the wall while she drank the last of the bourbon she had. Of course she hadn't drunk all of it. She had offered everyone that passed to have some, but she was pretty drunk after all.

"I'm going to bed, if I find it." Alec said and stumbled at the direction of his "bed".

"You drunk?" Mark asked Jessica.

"Yup." She answered. "You?"

"Yup." He said.

Mark took another step and stepped on an empty can of beer and fell down. He was drunk enough to block out the pain and simply laughed as he hit the floor. Then he fell asleep. It was nice to sleep.

A/N: And here it comes, the classic mall. As I started writing this I promised myself to never have a mall scene, but it was inevitable. The malls are as important for a zombie story as the zombies and the headshots. At least the headshots, zombies are like the base of the zombie flicks. I hope no one gets pissed on for me using this cliché. Wrote this whole chapter over a night. Started at 22.15 and finished 04.15. All thanks to coffee.


	10. First day in the Mall

Authors note: Sorry for not updating in a while. Got a burst of ideas the other day and finished this in a couple of hours and the next one will be hitting the streets in a few days.

Chapter ten: First day in the mall

In his own opinion Mark woke up too early. He opened his eyes and the first thing that struck him was that he was soaked through with water. The next thing was that he had the worst hangover ever. He didn't remember much from the night before, everything from Steve's speech and forward was a blur. The bottle of tequila and falling into the fountain was about it. He sat up and the headache got worse. As he looked around he could see Jessica sleeping leaned against the counter on which Gerald also slept. He heard footsteps behind him and looked at the entrance to the shop. Brandon and Ryan was on their way back carrying something that looked suspiciously like a coffee maker and two bags which seemed to contain food. As they got inside the shop Brandon handled Mark a coke without even saying a word. The two young men sat down besides him. Mark looked around in the shop and all he could see was empty bottles and cans.

"How's the hangover?" Brandon asked Mark.

"Not so good. What about you two, how much did you drink last night?" He answered.

"Enough for counting it as a good time." Ryan said. "Not as much as you kids though." He gave Mark a very blaming look that under no conditions was to be taken seriously.

"I wasn't worst you know. Alec was way worse and I think Jessica's hangover will be worse than mine." Mark said. "At least I remember some of it."

"Maybe. Both of you mixed beer and booze, which doesn't give to nice hangovers. Take my advice on this, either drink beer or booze, not both. And stay away from moonshine." Brandon said.

"If I didn't already know that I would find it very hard to believe that your advice was any good." Mark said. "I know what you told Alec to do."

All three of them laughed a little.

"Did he do it?" Ryan asked and looked at Brandon.

"They left before he got back, and thank god for that. Man, I don't think he knew if she was together with that monkey boy or not." Mark said.

"You've got to admit that it would have been kinda funny to see though." Ryan said.

"Of course it would, but not for him. What food did you get?" Mark said.

"Besides the canned food we brought there's some bread and cheese here and some kind of ham or something. We're gonna go back later to get lunch." Brandon said and handled the bread, butter and the ham to Mark who started making a sandwich with a plastic knife Ryan handled to him.

"Do you know where Steve is?" Mark asked while eating.

"Nope, hasn't seen him since last night when he told us to be quiet. Think he crashed at that Skip guys place." Brandon said.

"Let's wake Gerald." Ryan said and picked up an empty can of beer and threw it at the sleeping daredevil.

The can of beer wasn't completely empty and on its way through the air it sprayed everything under it with warm beer. It hit Gerald on the cheek and woke him up immediately. He didn't know what was happening and lost balance on the counter and fell down over Jessica's legs, waking her as well. She to got scared when the 167 pounds of Gerald fell on her legs. She opened her eyes tried to understand what had happened.

"For fucks sake! Let me sleep!" She said and tried to get Gerald away from her legs. After a while Gerald crawled away and sat up and wondered what happened.

"Wakey wakey." Brandon said and all three laughed at the two others.

"Fuck you guys. I'm going to sleep. I feel like shit." Jessica mumbled and got up on her feet and walked over to the other side of the shop and laid down and fell asleep again. Gerald started to eat some food and drank some coke hoping that the caffeine in it would help with the hangover. Everyone was quiet for a while but then Mark asked something.

"What are we gonna do today?" He asked.

"Don't know actually. Sleep, eat and check out the mall." Brandon said. "And get a real bed."

They sat there and ate the rest of the food while the other people woke up and walked out of their homes in the other shops. During that time Mark remembered a little more of the night before. After a while Alec woke up and joined them.

"I heard the girl left before you got to follow up my advice." Brandon said to Alec.

"What?" Alec asked.

"What do you mean by what?" Brandon asked. "Don't you remember?"

"Actually not to much. If you don't count falling into the fountain and talking way to much to that girl whose name I don't remember I don't remember a goddamn thing about last night." Alec explained. Mark could see that he wasn't really telling the truth.

"You asked Brandon for advice yesterday on how to get 'closer' to that girl and he told you to squeeze her tits or something and you said you were going to do it." Ryan told Alec and everyone laughed at Alec.

"Good for you that you didn't do it." Mark said. "First off she would either have slapped you in the face or told the monkey boy to do it and second, if it had worked you would have regretted it today." He continued.

"I still claim that it wasn't me, it was the booze talking." Alec said. "And besides, why would I regret it?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, after all it's just my opinion. But that girl wasn't really that hot. And having a tooth brace the size of a transamerican railroad didn't add on to the beauty." Mark said.

"She had a tooth brace?" Alec asked. "Didn't notice that."

"There you see how drunk you were. How's the hangover?" Mark asked.

"It's fuckning killing me." Alec answered.

"Do you think we should clean this before Steve gets here?" Gerald asked as he looked at the disorder in the shop where empty cans of beer littered the floor and a few shelves had fallen down and there were clothes all over the floor. The whole place smelt of hangover, a mix of beer, booze and the 'fags' Cassidy had smoked.

Cleaning was easier said than done. It took them little over an hour to get the worst of it away. And when they were finished they realised that they hadn't done more than to pile all the junk in a corner. And still it smelled hangover. But the boys decided that it was enough and that they needed to sleep more. But before they got anymore sleep Steve followed by Martin and Roy entered. The ones that had slept was woken up and the group of survivors gathered around Steve.

"Howdy friends." Steve started. "Smells real nice in here. If you don't mind I like to say that you did a shitty job cleaning up. I talked a little to Skip last night and I've got a few things that I would like to inform you about."

"Go on." The group mumbled.

"You weren't all that quiet last night. You guys are really lucky that not to many people have settled down in these parts of the mall. But I didn't think anything else would happen. Just hope you had a good time. Second, if we're going to stay here we're going to help with everything anyone needs help with, like everyone else in here are going to help us. There's not really any laws here, except for those that come naturally. I talked to Skip and it's okay for you to carry your guns around as long as you don't fuck up. I told him I believed I could trust you to not fuck up. I think that's about it. If you don't mind I had the idea that we should grab some useful things in the other shops. Like beds."

The rest of the day was spent ransacking the other stores for everything that could be useful or just nice to have in their new home. Beds, a few tables, some plasma screen televisions with built in DVD players and movies for them. Mark didn't dare to think about the price of everything in all. A whole lot of money, that was for sure. When there were people in the shops they 'borrowed' something from they seemed eager to help. Life in the mall was pretty good and by 4 p.m. Mark and Alec sat down in a newly acquired sofa with the rest of the beers from the night before to watch _The Simpsons Season 4_ on a 36 inch plasma TV. Mark didn't hear to much of it since he listened to _Sublime _on his 'borrowed' walkman. Alec didn't watch to much of the TV show since he was consumed by checking out the new laptop he had. After watching a few episodes Mark remembered his promise to himself. He both smelled and looked like shit. He walked around the store looking for something to wear. He grabbed what seemed to be his almost uniform clothes, jeans and a black T-shirt.

"Do you know where I can take a shower?" He asked Steve who sat and read a book at one of the tables. Steve closed the book and looked at Mark.

"There's a staff room on the second floor. Took a shower this morning. Grab a towel before you go there, I didn't and had to dry myself with the old clothes." Steve said. Then he opened the book again and started reading.

Mark walked away to find the staff room. The second floor wasn't different from the first one except for different names on the stores and a lot more people. Most people seemed to have settled on the second and third floors for some reason. On his way to the staff room he entered a shop and grabbed some hygiene stuff, a razor, a towel and so on. It didn't take long before he found the staff room. He had to wait for three other people to take showers before him and when he was next there was five others behind him. They seemed to look at him with judging eyes to deem him worthy of his place in the haven from the dead, or at least it felt like that. The staff room was pretty big, made for at least ten people and had a essential stuff that the maintaince crew and security guards could have spent their time with. Mark just walked past it and into the shower.

When he had cleaned himself up, shaved and put on the clothes without gore on them he felt like a new guy. Not really, but real good. Clean was the word to describe it. But as he stood there and looked at himself in the mirror it felt as if he had forgot something. Something very important. Then it hit him like a slug from a .45. _Where's the shotgun? _He thought and almost panicked. He wasn't holding it and didn't have it slung over his shoulder. Then he remembered that it was back in the shop.

Before he returned he stopped at a uninhabited seven eleven and grabbed a coke and a candy bar. While he was in the seven eleven he took the opportunity to look over the counter and check if there was any cash left. Not that cash had any real value now, but it would be cool to show up with a grand back with the others. But someone had been there before him. _Figures, _he thought and returned to the others.

Back there everything was as it had been when he left. Gerald, Terry, Ryan and Brandon played a game of basketball outside and Cassidy and Carl sat besides the game and talked over a beer. Alec sat where he had been sitting when Mark left and was still checking the computer and the _Simpsons _at the same time. Steve was still reading the book. Jessica was nowhere to be seen. He walked up to the sofa where Alec slacked and sat down.

"Up for a game of Tekken dear friend?" Alec asked while he sat down, not taking his eyes of the computer screen. Both of them knew that Mark was the undoubted master of the game and that Alec wouldn't stand a chance.

"Sure, I'll gladly kick your ass as good as I would have in reality. Don't you have any other game that we are at least almost matched in?" He answered and reached out for the 'borrowed' playstation and started it. The game was on.

"We've only got Tekken and Resident Evil, which doesn't feel all that cool to play." Alec answered as the credits to the game started.

"Why the hell did you pick that game? If we want zombies we can look outside." Mark told his friend and chose fighter.

"Before all of this I liked the game. But you're right, it's a little macabre to play it nowdays." The friend concluded. The fight started.

Mark outmatched Alec easily. Alec was the one that owned a playstation and Tekken back in the days but Mark was a natural at it. With a few kicks, punches and combos Alec's fighter was knocked out. A new fight started. This was also won by Mark, even if Alec was a little closer to even get a single hit on Mark's fighter than last time. After nine matches of Tekken both of them had got tired of playing, mostly because Alec only won once.

"This sucks! Can we play something else?" Alec asked and put down the gamepad.

"Sure, as long as I can beat you in it." Mark answered. "The thing is that we don't have any other games than this and Resident Evil, which I'm by no means playing now."

"Let's go then." Alec said and stood up. Alec picked up the glock that had been lying besides the two boys in the sofa since it wasn't comfortable at all to sit down with it in ones pants. He tucked it in his pants again, making sure it was safe two times. Then they left.

The closest shop that housed playstation games was the electronics shop where Tim, Maria and Chris and the two others lived. Alec didn't really want to go there but since both of them felt to lazy to go anywhere else they didn't have any options. Mark actually looked forward to it as he didn't know how Maria would react to see Alec in a sober condition.

"Stop smirking like that!" Alec ordered as they got closer and closer to the dreaded electronics store.

"No." Was the only answer Alec got from the boy whose whole face seemed to be a smirk. "I like smirking."

"You really look forward to what she's gonna say aren't you?" Alec asked.

"Yup." Mark answered, still smirking. "Aren't you?"

"What do you think?" Was the answer.

"To be honest I think you're a little ashamed of yourself for being a drunken slob yesterday. That's why I look forward to it so much." Mark said.

"Shut the fuck up now, we're here." Alec hissed and Mark tried to control his smirk a little.

As the two boys entered the store three pairs of eyes locked on them. It was Tim, the boy they had told to fuck off and the girl with the tits. The fuck off boy didn't look to happy about them being in his home, the girl seemed to not care and Tim looked pretty glad to see them. Chris and Maria was out of sight. Tim looked at Alec and then at Mark, and when seeing Marks smirk he started to smirk too. For a moment no one said anything.

"Can we rob you on a couple of Ps2 games?" Alec asked.

"Sure." Tim said. "Had a good time last night, as always with alcohol."

"You left before the fun had a chance to start." Mark told Tim. Alec punched Mark on the shoulder when he understood what Mark really meant.

"Yeah I know, but Chris was to tired and Maria wasn't drunk enough so they went home and I followed them." Tim told Mark as Alec checked out some games.

"Wasn't drunk enough?" The fuck of boy said with doubt in his voice and looked at Tim. "You said she threw up on the way home and she couldn't get out of bed until two p.m. I'd say she was pretty damn drunk. If I knew my sister would drink that much without you even caring I would have followed just to check on her."

"Well, when you say it like that your sister was pretty drunk. But she wasn't drunk enough for some things." Tim said and looked at the boy. "Oh, Mark have you met Matt here."

"A little, didn't know his name though." Mark said calmly, he didn't like Matt at all.

Mark looked at Matt who did the same at him. The boy could be as old as him or maybe a year older but was shorter, skinnier and had blue eyes and black hair. It was dyed, he was sure since he the hair was black enough to look dark blue. Then he looked at the girl who also looked at him. Her hair color was something between brown and red, she had freckles and of course, big tits. While not being ugly she wasn't all that pretty either. In some kind of way she looked a little to masculine. Mark just couldn't point out what it was, but she sure as hell looked a little like a guy. He stopped analysing as Alec tapped him on the shoulder.

"I've got the games, let's go." He said and started walking.

"See you around." Mark said and followed his friend.

"You got real lucky this time pal." Mark told Alec as they walked back. "Next time she'll be there and then I am going to laugh at you when you try to explain why you did as you did. I am going to laugh a lot."

"Whatever." Alec mumbled.

They returned to their home and played the looted games until it was really late at night and the others told them to stop it and go to sleep. Mark agreed that it was a little late and convinced Alec that it was a day tomorrow too. After a while he too agreed and went out for a smoke. Mark went to bed, turned the walkman on and drifted to sleep to Santeria by Sublime.

Waking up is always a bitch. Especially when you had a dream that everything was like before, sugar and spice everything nice and that you had a hot girlfriend. What else could you demand from a simple dream? Not much, Mark concluded and opened his eyes. He was where he had fallen asleep, a good sign. He sat up in the bed and looked around. He couldn't see any of the others in the shop. He could hear something though, but he was sure it wasn't one of the others in the shop. It was music, really bad music. Some pop music he concluded. His ears hurt more and more every second he had to listen to the crap. He got up and looked around for the source of the sound. It came from the CD player he and Alec had taken for the party. And besides it sat Jessica reading a magazine, a girlie magazine of course. Mark crouched into a sneaking walk and advanced as soundless as he could. And when he was close enough he tapped her on her shoulder. A high pitched scream pierced the crappy music and at the same time Mark pressed the stop button so that the whole shop went silent.

"Did I scare you?" Mark said and smiled.

"What do you think?" She answered.

"A little maybe, what's the time?" He asked.

"About half past one I think. You slept through all of us eating a breakfast together and didn't wake up when I started playing music. Not much can wake you up, can it?" She sad and smiled at him.

"This crappy music did. How can you listen to it?" Mark asked and started looking for something to eat. After a while he found a candy bar and a coke and sat down besides Jessica.

"You're not aware of the fact that you're in you're not wearing any pants are you?" Jessica said after a while.

Mark wasn't. _This sucks, a lot. Just play along. Be cool man._ Mark thought.

"Nope, I wasn't aware of that at all. Do you mind?" He asked and tried to sound as cool as he could. He managed to sound a little calmer than how panicked he actually was.

"A little. But it's okay. After all you live here as much as me or anyone else." She said while Mark ate the candy bar.

"Do you know where they are?" Mark asked as he hadn't seen or heard anyone else than Jessica.

"They're on the roof. Steve, Cassidy and Martin are playing chess or something and Gerald, Terry, Brandon, Ryan and Alec and a couple of others are throwing expensive stuff from the roof. Felt kinda dumb to compete in destroying as expensive stuff as possible so I went back here." She told him.

"Cool." Was the only thing Mark said. As he finished the coke he went to get his jeans. When he was dressed he turned to Jessica. "See you later. Gotta go beat them in their own game."

"Bye." She said as Mark exited the his home.

Mark hurried to the roof as he wanted to see the destruction his friends had caused. He took the elevator to the third floor and then went through the service stairs to the roof. It was crowded. At least two thirds of the malls population had gathered on the roof to enjoy the sunshine and get as much fresh air as they could. Some people just sunbathed, some played volleyball and a couple of others had a chess tournament. And of course a group of people enjoyed the beautiful day by throwing stuff from the roof, TV's and computers mostly. Other than his friends Mark also noticed Tim, Matt, Chris and two punk rocker kids in the standard punk gear like chains, piercings and mohawks. The punks explained why Rancid boomed out over the roof. While not a bad band it wasn't something Mark used to listen to. If you didn't count the destruction of lots of expensive electronics the feeling was that of a beach. Mark looked at the chess games and saw something he hadn't excpected. Cassidy the streetfighting, punk rocking, heavy drinking Irishman was playing chess. Right now he was facing someone in his mid twenties with a cowlick.

"Hey Mark! Come over here and help us tip this over!" Alec shouted over _Lock, Step and Gone_ by _Rancid_. It wasn't easy to overpower the hoax roar of the singer but Alec managed.

Alec, Gerald and Ryan was trying to push a stove down into a pile of crashed TV's, computers and various other things that someone could have spent good money on just a week ago. Mark hurried to help them. Together they tipped it over and saw it fall for a few seconds only to impact in the pile of junk and throw all kinds of parts from the already crushed stuff into the air. It was beautiful.

"How long have you guys been doing this?" Mark asked his closest friend.

"For about an hour I think. Maybe two. Time flies away when you're having fun you know." Alec slurred. As he started to talk a smell of beer hit Mark like a punch in the face.

"Are you drunk Alec?" Mark asked him.

"A little. Maybe a lot. Don't really know." Alec answered.

"I'm leaning towards saying a lot. It was his clumsy ass that dropped the beer down there." Gerald put in the conversation and pointed down at the pile. Mark looked a little closer and could see the smashed bottles of beer reflecting in the sun.

"We're out of stuff." Another voice told the group. It belonged to one of the punks. This one had a black mohawk and a few piercings in the face. He looked to be in Mark and Alec's age or a little older. Alec turned around and looked at the empty boxes and realised that the guy was right.

"You think we should go down and get more?" Alec asked the others.

Before anyone could answer him a gunshot rang out. Everything stopped moving for a moment. Mark looked around to find the source of the gunshot. It didn't take long to find a man aiming a hunting rifle down on the parking lot. He fired again and then put down the rifle and turned around.

"No big deal, just two stiffs." He called out and everyone turned around and resumed what they had been doing.

The man himself had to be one of the national guardsmen that came with Skip. He had the camo pants on but had changed into a black shirt with an electric blue pattern on it. It clashed so bad that it was funny.

"Should we get more stuff?" Alec asked and sat down on the roof.

"Nah, it's starting to get boring now. We should do something else." Brandon said and looked at the pile down in the parking lot.

"Like what?" Ryan said.

"Eat lunch?" Gerald asked the group. "At least that's what I'm going to do."

"I'll come with you, I need something real to eat." Mark said and the two of them exited the roof.

"I just got an idea." Ryan said after a while. "Bowling anyone?"

"Sure, nothing better to do." Brandon agreed. Alec grunted something and followed them. Terry stood up and walked over to the volleyball to see if he could join. The rest of the group shattered into two groups, the kids from the electronics store returned to it to watch a movie or two and the punks stayed and listened to the music. Until one of them got the impulse to kick the cdplayer down from the roof. Then they decided to do something else.

Mark and Gerald settled to eat lunch by raiding the same seven eleven that Mark had stopped at the day before. As the sat down, Mark behind the counter and Gerald milling around looking for something to eat, Mark threw a glance at the newspapers. Headlines like "The pope is dead!" and "Election in Zimbabwe" filled them. He couldn't care less about any of that now. Before all of this Europe and Africa had been too far away to really care about. It was a thousand times less important now. Gerald got back with two bottles of water and bag of cheesy poofs. Not really the greatest food, but the best in the store. Gerald threw one of the bottles to Mark who caught it and opened it. It was nice to drink simple cold water instead for a change.

"How do you like it here in our new home?" Gerald asked.

"It's safe, that is good enough. What about you?" Said Mark.

"It's nice, got everything I need and a lot more, got good company and a dry place to sleep at. Can't ask for much more can I?" Gerald concluded and handled Mark the snacks.

"Not really." Mark said and ate a little. The didn't say anything for a while.

"Did you see that hot chick playing volleyball on the roof?" Gerald asked after a while.

"Blonde, nice body and about your age?" Mark continued as Gerald nodded. "Hard not to miss. Why ask?"

"I think she checked me out. Maybe I'll go talk to her later on." He said.

"Or you could ask Bran and Ryan for advice how to get such a girl that is so far out of your league." Mark joked. Gerald laughed a little and then looked at Mark.

"Out of my league? Hell no. And you shouldn't say anything since you're on Jessica like a leech. She's way out of your league." The friend returned the joke.

"Thanks a lot man. And do you really think I'm on her like a leech?" Mark said.

"Not really, just needed a comeback line. I think she likes you if you ask me." Gerald said, now sounding a lot more serious.

"Cool, I just made an ass out of myself this morning you know. Woke up, heard crappy music, sneaked up on Jessica listening to crappy music and scared the crap out of her. Then she pointed out that I didn't have any pants on." Mark said. A maniac laughter rang out in the room.

"That sucks. Not as worse as a thing I did though." He said after finishing laughing.

"What?" Mark asked.

"I was seeing this girl. She was really hot but a little of a snobby bitch, not that it mattered since she was a goddess between the sheets. However, we were taking a weekend in her cabin in the mountains and everything was nice. But on the third day or something she was going into town shopping early in the morning so she woke up before me. So when I woke up in around noon I heard someone unlocking the door. Of course I thought it was her so I got the idea that I would jump out and scream 'booh' in the nude at her. So I hid, waited till what I believed to be her entered the door and then jumped out and screamed only to realise that it was her family checking in on her. Mother, dad and baby sister. And there I was standing in nothing at all. From then it was get clothes, get on bike and drive a hundred miles an hour away from there." Gerald said and once again a maniac laughter was heard. After a while Gerald also started laughing.

"That sucks man." Mark said after a while.

"Yup."

Mark looked at the headlines and realised something.

"Do you think the pope is a zombie?" He asked Gerald.


	11. Paradise Lost

Chapter eleven: Paradise Lost

Day eleven since the world ended was a pretty shitty day for Mark and Alec. Waking up around noon hung over like hell on the floor and on the sofa. The days since they arrived at the mall had been a blur of boredom, drunkenness and sleeping. With nothing special to do the two boys tended to spend most of their awake time drinking and destroying things. Gerald, Brandon, Ryan and Terry moved out of the shop and into a record store on the opposite side of the mall. It turned into the new hangout place of everyone ranging from fifteen to thirty, a place to spend time drunk hitting on people of the opposite sex and listen to music. Almost like a night-club open twenty four seven. Michael hadn't been seen for a few days, he moved to some place on the second floor and didn't speak to anyone anymore. The amount of zombies finding their way to the mall grew over the days into fifteen to twenty a day instead of five. A guard schedule had to be set up and now five guards were on watch all the time. Another issue was that ammunition was running low and if the zombies kept coming like this they would be completely dry in a few days. But that was nothing Mark and Alec cared about right now.

"Where's the aspirin?" Alec asked his friend as he noticed that he was awake too.

"Don't know. Bad hangover?" Mark said.

"Mighty bad. How about you?" Alec said and sat up on the floor, as he sat up the headache got ten times more intense.

"Not to good. I tried not to drink too much last night. Don't really know if it worked out." Mark said and stood up and looked around. He couldn't see anyone else in the shop. He guessed they had went up to the roof or something to enjoy the day.

While Mark searched the mini cooler by his bed for something to eat Alec searched for aspirin. After a while both of them found what they searched for and sat down in the sofa in front of the TV playing a couple of episodes of _Simpsons_.

"So, what are we gonna do today?" Mark asked his friend.

"Don't know. The usual?" Alec answered.

"Maybe. There should be something else to do, shouldn't it?" Mark said.

"Like what?" Was the answer he got.

"Dunno. Wash up? At least that's what I'm going to do." Mark said. "I kinda feel it's what I'm going to do as soon as this episode ends."

They watched the rest of the episode and then Mark grabbed some new clothes and went to wash up. The clothes this time was a pair of jeans of the same brand as usual and a white T-shirt instead of standard black. On his way to the staff room he ran into Jessica looking as good as usual.

"Hello, where were you last night?" Mark asked.

"I went home early. I was tired and didn't want to be to hung over today. What happened after I left?"

"Oh, the usual stuff. Alec getting way to drunk and hitting on Maria, Ryan and Brandon fighting for fun and Travis the punk rocker trying to talk politics with everyone. You didn't miss anything." He said.

"Ok. I was going back to our place to tell you guys that Skip has called for a meeting later this afternoon and that everyone should be there. What are you going to do today?" She said.

"Right now the only thing I've got planned is taking a shower. What about you?" He answered.

"Nothing really. I was sitting at the roof reading when Jay, the soldier guy, came up and told everyone that Skip was going to have a meeting of some kind at four. He didn't say what it was about. I think dad is involved in it for some reason." Jessica said.

"He's been hanging with Skip a lot hasn't he?" Mark stated.

"Yeah, he's taking the whole leader role kinda serious. A leftover from the glorious days on the road." She said and chuckled a little. Mark joined in.

"He's a good guy and a good leader. He brought us here didn't he?" Mark said.

"I guess so." Jessica said.

"What are you gonna do now?" Mark asked.

"I'm gonna go back home and just slack for a while. Then I guess there's the meeting to go to at four." She told him.

"Okay, see you around." Mark said and continued to the staff room. This time he was alone and could walk straight into the shower.

He returned to the store after stopping by talking to some newly found friends and grabbing something to eat. Alec wasn't there, he'd probably left for an early start of drinking at Bran's place. Jessica sat in one of the three couches in the store reading and listening to music as usual and Mark didn't feel for disturbing her. He sat down in his own sofa and started the DVD. He changed the disc with _Simpsons _on it to one with some B-movie on it. Then he just sat back and enjoyed the cheesy plot and bad acting. After a while he stopped trying to figure out what the hell the movie was about and only check for mistakes in it. and that wasn't too hard. A little later he didn't care about the movie at all and just thought about things, life before the Change and life after the Change. What he missed in the old days and how strange life was now. He sat there brooding until the movies end credits entered the TV-screen. He sat there while all the credits, from the "stars" of the movie to the directors assistants, travelled over the screen. He switched movie to another one, one with a bigger budget. It was one of those long movies that played for almost three hours. He didn't finish watching since Jessica told him that the time was 15.55 and that it would be wise to go to the meeting. The two of them walked to the so called town square of the mall where most people had gathered around a podium someone had built out of boarding together a couple of tables. At the same time that Mark and Jessica got there Skip stepped up on the podium and started talking. He looked like last time Mark had seen him but had dark rings around his eyes that told everyone that he hadn't slept much the last days. When he talked he sounded like a president talking to his party during election time.

"As everyone who's been up on the roof for the last days has noticed there's a lot more infected milling around down there. This far we have been successful in putting them down as soon as we see them, but there's a problem. We're running out of ammo. If it keeps on like this we wont have any bullets left and that would eliminate any way to get out of here as soon as we get contact with the rest of the world which we are trying to with the radios we brought when we came here." He stopped for a while and let the words sink into the crowd.

"The only 'plan' me and Steve could come up with was that we simply would head into town and raid a gun shop..." He was interrupted by someone in the crowd.

"That's suicide and you know it!" A man in the crowd shouted. Skip nodded.

"I know it's damn risky to do something like that. The town is probably crowded with the infected ones. But we can either do that and maybe die or sit in here and not be able to get out when we finally make contact with someone else. I'm not ordering anyone to come with me, simply asking anyone who feels that he or she has got balls enough to go out there. With me, Malcolm (national guardsman in bad looking shirt), Eric (national guardsman two), Steve and Carl we've got five people. We need a lot more than that. Some to act bait and draw most of the infected away, some to load up the stuff in cars and some others to hold the infected away. You who feel brave enough to do this can stay, the rest of you can leave and do whatever you want." He didn't say anything else and most of the people walked away. Mark stayed while Skip went through the plan.

The next day Mark and Alec sat in the pickup once again, but with the addition of Travis the Punk-rocker between them. Travis had become a very good friend with Mark and Alec and had volunteered as soon as he saw that his two friends were staying, his fellow punk rocker friend had stayed behind, not really seeing the point in doing something dangerous someone else could do instead. Jessica had wanted to come with them but Steve had forbidden her. Almost thirty people had volunteered to what might be a suicide mission. The first thing to do was to have the 'bate' car, who as usual was driven by Brandon, Ryan and Gerald, drive past the gun shop and attract the attention of all the zombies in the neighbourhood. Then the rest of the group was going to drive up to the store, park in a half circle around the shop and get out. While there the people with guns were going to cover the rest who were going inside and take whatever they could find. A simple plan that probably would work. Alec drove the car as usual and Mark simply tried to relax. Actually he wondered why he had volunteered on such a dangerous thing like this. Standing there in the crowd while Skip had gone through the situation it had felt like one of those "what the hell, at least I'll get good karma" times. But this wasn't giving some change to a hobo, it was life and death. Out of the thirty people that had volunteered to the mission twenty seven was armed, including Mark and Alec. Travis only had a kitchen knife he had taken from a shop for protection, which probably wouldn't do any good if he got close and personal with one of the zombies. They drove in a big caravan now, with Skip, Eric and Malcolm in the first car and the school bus with Steve, Cassidy, Carl and two other men. Then there was two other cars and then Alec and Mark. Then there was a lot of other cars in shifting size and brand. The baits had drove of fifteen minutes before the others and hopefully they would have lured away the undead inhabitants around the gun shop. When they drove into town they saw the exact same thing as they had seen while going into Harrisburg. Destruction. Crashed and bloodstained windows, doors open to houses, overturned cars, burned out remains of houses, decomposing bodies with holes in their heads lying in the middle of the street. It wasn't a pretty sight. Travis looked at it with sheer horror in his eyes, he hadn't realised it would be like this when he got out of the mall. The caravan drove on and got closer to their destination. Mark looked out the window and hadn't seen a single zombie during the whole trip. Gerald and the guys had done a good job.

"Travis, take this. It beats the knife if you get in trouble." Alec said and handled Travis the glock. "Do you know how it works?"

"Not really. Just aim and pull the trigger?" The uncertain punk said.

"Sort of. There's the safety." He pointed at it with one hand while keeping the other hand on the steering wheel. "It's a full magazine but I don't have a spare clip, so aim your shots."

"I'll try to do that. You guys are going to cover us who load the stuff in aren't you?" Travis said.

"Yeah, we are." Mark said. "You're from this town aren't you?"

"Yeah, lived here all my life." Travis answered.

"Then you know how close we are to the gun shop don't you?" Mark asked.

"It's only a few blocks now." Was the answer.

Travis was right. After a few blocks a brick house with letters saying "Chris' Guns" told them that they had reached their destination. The cars did as Skip had planned and parked around the entrance. The school bus, the humvee and the pickup and two other cars formed the first half circle and the rest of the cars a second one around the first. As soon as the engines stopped everyone rushed out of their vehicles, some up on their cars to cover for any incoming zombies and the rest into the store which luckily was unlocked. For a few minutes everything was quiet while the people in the store loaded up bags with ammunition, handguns and several other of the things they found in there. Then the first victim of infection showed itself. It had been a big trucker guy with a beer gut. Now the beer gut was ripped open and his real guts were exposed. Malcolm was first to see him and fired of a three round burst hitting in the neck and head. The loud gunshot seemed to attract all of the zombies that for some reason hadn't heard the bait car driving past fifteen minutes ago. A few came the way the caravan had been coming, some from the houses on the opposite side of the street and a few from the houses on the side of the gun shop. The people standing on the cars aimed and fired as soon as they saw the zombies, but since most of them had handguns they didn't hit the running targets, and even fewer hit the creatures in the head. And when they got closer to the wall of cars a lot of people were in the middle of reloading. One man, someone Mark luckily didn't know, was dragged down from his car by the ghouls as they reached his car. He was dragged out of Mark's line of sight and only his tormented screams were heard. But on close range as this the men from the mall could hold the ghouls away. Mark threw away a couple of shots at the running zombies but mostly missed. He hit one at least, a middle aged woman covered in blood and wounds. As she took the hit and a crimson flower appeared on her chest the zombie staggered back only to start running again. Someone else put the poor thing out of its misery before Mark got time to shoot again. Mark fired a last time and emptied the shotgun. He got down from the car and reloaded with the spare shells he had brought. He only had eight spare shells, Carl had the rest. While the battle raged on the cars and beyond the people ran from the store to the cars loading them full with boxes of all kinds of ammo, guns of all kinds and the other cool things they found in the shelves. Skip stood on the hood of his humvee and picked his target, disposing them off one by one. But the more bullets they fired, the more zombies seemed to appear. He jumped down from the hood, turned around.

"Skip, we almost cleaned the store completely. We've got all we need and a lot more!" Someone shouted over the gunfire.

Skip turned around, saw that only a few zombies were approaching and shouted to the whole group.

"Get in the cars, we're leaving!" He ordered them.

After taking down the three zombies that were charging them at the moment everyone got in their cars. The whole mission had worked like well oiled machine. They drove back the way they came and they journey back was uneventful. As they reached the underground carpark Mark's adrenaline was still pumping. They hadn't spoken a word since they got in the cars and drove away from the gun shop. As they got out from the cars Mark looked behind them and saw the rest of the caravan roll into the carpark safe and sound. Everyone got out of their cars and started checking how many men they had lost. Luckily enough the only casualty seemed to be the man who had been dragged down from his car. It was a hard price to pay but thinking of how they had secured their future in the post apocalyptical world it was worth it. Mark noted that Gerald and the boys were nowhere to be seen, neither was their car. Mark really hoped that nothing had happened to them. He turned to Travis and Alec.

"We did good. You guys wanna go home and take beer or something to cool down?" He asked them.

"You don't know how mature you sounded there, but yes. Are you coming Travis?" Alec said.

"Sure." And the three boys headed home. Unloading the weapons had to wait.

Steve and the men in the bus didn't wait for unloading their things, something that they were the only ones that did. Most people simply left the stuff there until it was going to be used.

As soon as they got home and saw that everyone was alright they started unloading. Cassidy said he was too tired to unload a bunch of guns and walked away from the others after picking out what he concluded to be "the meanest shooter on god's green earth". Steve didn't care much if Cassidy was lazy or not, he was a good man one could trust his back with. He looked at all the things they had loaded into the bus under that short period of time they had been there. Rifles, pistols, camo suits and everything else that one could think of. Before Steve could start unloading the things a last car drove into the underground car park. The headlights blinded Steve so that he couldn't see which car it was, but when they turned them off he saw that it was the lost bait that had returned. Out jumped three ragged looking young men screaming so loud that nothing they said was hearable. After a moment they calmed down enough to let one talk at a time. Brandon started.

"We need to get the fuck out of here NOW!" He almost shouted. "There's a couple of thousand fucking zombies only minutes away if as much as that! We just saw them turn around and run back as soon as they heard you guys shooting!"

"What are you talking about?" Steve asked calmly.

"They must have followed you here. We just saw a fucking horde of them covering the way so we had to drive around them!" Ryan shouted.

"We have to warn the others." Steve concluded.

"No time for that. We're just gonna bail and you should too if you wanna live." Brandon told him and got into the car. Ryan and Gerald followed him and they simply drove off. As cold hearted as it seemed Steve could understand it. He had to hurry now. He got into the bus and grabbed a rifle and ran out. The others in the carpark had left. He ran upstairs and behind him the dead flooded inside the carpark.

The SUV drove out of the carpark and met a horde of the living dead face to face. Hundreds, possibly thousands of the living dead were running straight at them and the mall. A thousand decomposing faces stained with blood looked at them with milky white eyes. Brandon, who was driving the car, made a U-turn and started driving around the mall, knowing that there was another way out, another way to get away. He tried to not think of the fact that he had left the friends that had saved him and been as close to him as a family for the last few days. At least he warned them. Either they could lock themselves up and stay there until they got help, if they ever would get help, or they could try to escape. Brandon chose the latter. It was easier to survive this way, maybe find another little community with survivors. But right now it was up to him to get them away from the zombies. He wondered how it was going for Terry, he had stayed behind being all mature and not taking any unnecessary risks.

"We just left them there." Gerald said sadly.

"At least we gave them a chance by warning them." Ryan told him. "I hope they're going to make it. And if they don't get out they're at least safe if they block up the mall until they get help."

"They're going to be fine, we're probably gonna meet them tomorrow. There's a limited amount of roads leading out of here." Brandon told his two friends while losing the undead behind him.

"Yeah, I hope so." Gerald said.

The three boys was just about to reach their clothes store when the screams started. The mall used to be quiet except for when someone put the mall muzak on. This day there were no music and everything was quiet as Mark and the two others strode down the mall. Then a high pitched scream was heard echoing through the mall. It was followed by other screams. And the shuffling of feet, lots of feet. All three of them turned around simultaneously just to see people running with pure horror painted on their faces and more people running behind them. After a second glance Mark saw that the people running behind the terrified ones he recognised wore tattered rags, deadly wounds and white eyes. They froze in their tracks as they realised what had happened. Somehow the zombies were inside and now the only thing that mattered was to get the hell away from them. Just as the three boys regained movement Cassidy and Jessica rushed out of the store. Jessica wore the dress opposite of a hawaii shirt and her .38 while Cassidy was packing some sort of Kalashnikov assault rifle. Quite an odd couple. But no one had time to think about that. Cassidy was first to really do something.

"Get in the fucking shop!" He shouted and ran inside himself. The four others followed him inside.

They ran past Cassidy who stood by the entrance and when the last one, which happened to be Mark, had passed he slammed the double doors shut and jammed a lamp between them, not having time to look for a key. A few moments later a single person ran past, someone that none of them knew, and only a second or two later the horde of undead. While many of them ran past the shop some of them turned their heads and stared straight at the prey inside through the glass windows that served as a portal between the living and the dead. The creatures started beating on the glass. Cassidy didn't look at the creatures a second time and was already halfway towards the emergency exit. The others stood paralyzed for a second looking at the decaying faces and grim determination in the creatures until one of them hit the glass so hard that a hole about a feet wide appeared in the glass. The rest of the glass broke a moment later. They ran after the Irishman who had kicked the emergency door open and started sprinting upwards. Again Mark was the last to get inside the storehouse and glanced down towards the stairs that lead to the carpark. He saw figures running down there, and they weren't alive. In the shop the assaulting undead were halfway, slipping on the broken glass had given the humans a little head start. Mark sprinted upwards, but since the floors of the mall were a lot bigger than the usual ones Mark was exhausted as he reached the third floor. He glanced down again and saw that the zombies behind him were like a swarm of ants, so thick that he couldn't see the floor under them. He turned around and fired the shotgun at the closest zombie and blasted it backwards and stopping the horde for a second. The time it took him to stop, aim and turn around he didn't get any further away from them. As he reached the third floor he saw Travis disappearing up to the space between the third floor and the roof. Mustering a little new strength Mark ran the last part of the stairs. Mark reached the space between the roof and the third floor Cassidy stood there with his rifle and as soon as Mark got through the door he stepped out and fired into the mob in front of him. Mark couldn't see if he hit or not but as soon as the intense automatic fire stopped Cassidy was sprinting up the stairs. Mark followed and when he got up he met the three others carrying chairs.

"Throw them down there, it will stop them for a while at least!" Cassidy shouted.

The three kids did as the Irishman told them and lunged the chairs down to block the door which the creatures had started banging on. They seemed to be too dumb to open a simple door and Mark was thankful for that, but in time they would brake it down. Mark ran over to the chairs, grabbed one and ran back and lunged it down into the stairs. The five survivors worked like that until they were out of chairs and then Cassidy ordered the four kids to take down the volleyball net and bring him the two metal poles to block the door with. While they did that Cassidy reached into his pocket and picked out a set of lockpicks, something that none of the kids had seen him carrying. Using the lockpicks he locked the door from the outside and awaited that the others would bring the two metal poles. When that came they worked together to jam one of the poles in the space between the handle and the door so that it would connect with the wall over the roof and block anyone who tried to break the door down. The second pole they used to block the door in another way, to lean it towards the door so that any attempts to break the door down would become a lot harder. When that was done all five of them just sat down and breathed out, letting the adrenaline flush out of their systems. Somehow Mark calmed down enough to try to think out how this might have happened. The creatures must have followed them back, but how could there be so many of them and fast? He didn't know the answer to that question and before he could start thinking about it Cassidy started speaking.

"We need to get out of here now." He spoke fast and with a very Irish accent.

"How the fuck are we gonna do that?" Alec said and stood up and looked at Cassidy. "There's no fucking way to get down from here except for those stairs."

"I don't fucking know how. But I know we have to." Cassidy said and sounded a lot calmer than Alec. Truth was that he was just as freaked as the kid.

Mark looked around on the roof to see if there was any possible way to get down from the roof. The roof was barren with only a few things lying around. A volleyball, a few chairs that had been to far away when they blocked the stairs and some other scattered items that people hadn't cared about to take with them down from the roof. Everyone was too shocked to really try to think anything and after a short while Mark just sat down. Alec followed Marks example and sat down besides him. Travis looked down over the edge of the roof and saw scattered dead stumble around down in the parking lot. Jessica just stood where she had stopped and looked up into the sky thinking about if Steve and Carl were alright or not. A tear formed in her eye. Cassidy on the other hand wasn't idle. He walked around on the roof and looked down over the edge, at the things left on the roof and everything else. It looked like if he was looking for something. What it was Mark didn't know. It didn't take long before the Irishman told him. It was a crazy idea, but it was an idea and right now it seemed to be the only idea.

Only a few minutes later, somewhere between five and fifteen, the group was into Cassidy's crazed plan. When the Irishman had walked around the roof and tried to think about a plan to get away from the roof he saw the part of the first floor and second that stuck out from the main building, it was almost as if it had been built onto the mall after the initial construction. And it probably was like that too, the place belonged to the malls own two story supermarket. On the roof of the exterior building however, there was a great window covering most of the roof. As Cassidy remembered no one had lived there and it had been closed, so most likely there weren't any zombies in there. There might be some kind of way out down there. It was a good six meter drop, too long to just jump down and land on your feet excepting to have both legs intact but the clever and motivated Irishman came up with the idea of using the volleyball net as a ladder to climb down. The idea was the only one they had at that moment and versus staying on the roof until they starved to death it was worth a try. Jessica, being the lightest one climbed down first and made it easy. Having tied the net to the roof another meter was missing. But the two meter drop wasn't a problem for Jessica. Or Alec or Travis. But when Cassidy was climbing down the net it creaked as if it was about to break any second. But it didn't and Cass made his way down. Mark was last to make his way down and having been a little scared of heights his whole life climbing six meters down something that wasn't made for climbing and could break any minute wasn't something he looked forward too. Not at all. But at least he tried. It worked out fine, until he only had a single step to take and then to drop two meters. The net finally broke and poor Mark dropped down without being prepared for it. Mark didn't know what happened until he hit cement ground and his left foot hurt like hell. He lost balance as he hit the ground and fell down and scraped his face as a perfect finish on the whole thing. Before he had time to get up the others had rushed to his side. He had broken an arm once in a accident on a bike. It had hurt worse than this, not that his foot was good by any means. It was like in the movies when a guy is knocked down for some reason and all his friends/enemies gather around him looking down on him. But that view soon turned into the opening credits of a James Bond movies as blood poured down over his left eye. Travis and Alec got down and lifted him up so that he could stand leaned against the two of them.

"Did you break anything?" Cassidy asked while Jessica handed him something as absurd as a couple of dollar bills to wipe the blood out of his face. Mark did so but the blood kept coming.

"The left foot hurts like hell but I don't think it's broken." Mark answered as the dollar bill got drenched in blood. Cassidy got down on his knees and felt the leg, something that hurt a whole lot.

"Fucking stop it!" Mark shouted. Cassidy stopped.

"It doesn't seem to be broken. Hurt but not broken. And you look like scarface in a week." Cassidy said. "Can you walk on your own?"

"I think so, not fast though." Mark said and took a step forward to test his limits. It hurt to walk, but he could make it.

"We should stay here for a while and fix up Mark and then we continue down. I can't see any dead fucks down there so we've got a chance at least." Cassidy said and it sounded more like an order than a idea.

They stayed for twenty minutes waiting for Mark's bleeding to stop and for the group to check their guns and ammo. Cassidy only had a five bullets left, Jessica had her .38 fully loaded, Travis had Alec's glock with a full clip and Mark had his shotgun with a few spare shells. Alec had left his rifle in the car, something he regretted now. While they waited they heard a few scattered gunshots, but when ten minutes had passed everything was quiet.

The window was shatterproof but not bullet-proof. A single bullet from Cassidy's rifle shattered it and Cassidy ordered Mark to give him his shotgun. Mark did so and alone Cassidy jumped down into the store. It was quiet until he returned with a rope he threw up to the four on the roof and told them that the store was safe for them to climb down. They climbed down and when they got down Mark got his shotgun back. The group slowly sneaked through the shelves of everything anyone could need in an everyday life. Muzak poured from unseen speakers and for a while it felt as a normal day in a normal mall. As they got down to the first floor Cassidy who was in front of the others stopped and held up a closed fist as a signal to the others to do so as well.

"There's someone here." He whispered and looked around.

The whole room went quiet as the group stopped. After a few seconds of complete silence steps were heard from behind a shelf containing a drained amount of chips. It was more than one "person" moving, that was for sure. Behind him Mark heard the click as Jessica cocked her gun. As that sound echoed through the room the steps stopped.

"Anyone here?" Cassidy called out after a few seconds.

"Yeah." Another voice called out. It was familiar to Mark but he couldn't place it.

A group exited from behind the chips shelf. Mark recognised them as Chris, Maria, Matt, the girl with the tits and last of all Tim getting help to walk from Chris and Matt. The only one who was armed was Chris with a aluminium baseball bat.

"We were on our way out from the shop when we saw them. We got inside as soon as we could and found the keys to lock the place." Matt told them.

"What's his deal?" Travis asked and nodded at Tim.

"Bitten, but just grazed. Nothing serious. One of them managed get inside before we could lock up. I killed it." Chris said.

Four guns were aimed at the wounded boy. Everyone froze in their tracks.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Tim asked and looked scared.

"It's said to say it but you're already dead." Cassidy said not lowering his gun.

"But you can't be sure!" Chris stated. "How many times have you seen this happen?"

"Enough times to be sure. Soon you'll get a fever and then it's just gonna get worse. If I were you I would put someone's gun to my head and fire before..." Cassidy trailed off.

"But I'm not fucking you!" Tim screamed. "I don't want to fucking die! I've got a chance and I'm sticking to it."

"You don't." Mark told his friend Tim. "I've seen it happen too many times to doubt it."

"Fuck!" Alec screamed after a moment of silence. "This can't get any better can it?"

"To change subject for a moment, is there a lot of them out there?" Cassidy asked.

"I don't think so. Maybe a dozen close enough to the shop to be a problem." Chris said. "I think most of them are upstairs now, most people where there when it started."

"So if we run fast enough we can actually get to the garage?" Alec asked Chris.

"Yeah, but with so many of them out there it's kinda risky isn't it?" Asked Chris.

"We can make it. We doesn't have much of a choice do we?" Cassidy said. "I actually have an idea how we can do it a lot easier."

"How?" Matt asked.

So this was the end. This was the place that was going to be his final resting place. A blood soaked toilet filled with bullet casings and bodies. Not so bad after all, at least it could be worse. It could have been fading away senile and old in a piss soaked apartment. At a place like that it could take days before someone noticed the smell and went to look. In here no one would find him at all, if it wasn't one of those flesh eating beast that were banging on the door. He mustered strength enough to look around one last time. His blood poured out of him from all the bite wounds he had got. The one located on his chin felt like the Niagara but he guessed the one on his neck was the worst one. The looked more like a warzone than a mall toilet. He was sitting leaned against the wall farthest away from the door and between the door and him at least five stinking, rotting and permanently dead corpses lay. Blood had splattered on the walls and painted the originally white walls red. Bullet casings and a spent clip was strewn over the floor. It wasn't the best way to die but far from the worst. The banging on the door got more intense and the door creaked a last time before bursting inwards. In the doorframe a figure stood, a pale figure who's skin had fallen of at places showing bone and a almost skeletal face. It looked like the grim reaper himself. The pistol made it's way against his forehead as the zombie rushed and as Terry's finger tightened on the trigger the gun gave away a "click" sound of disappointment. The last thing Terry remembered was the grim reaper.

Cassidy's plan was once again neither safe or good at all. While two people, Chris and Maria, tended to the wounded Tim who's fever had started the others searched the shop for things that Cassidy ordered them to get. While some of it was food that they were going to need during the trip a few other items were paint thinner in plastic bottles and coca cola glass bottles. Molotov cocktails. After fifteen minutes enough primitive bombs had been assembled to overthrow a small nation. Or at least it looked like that. Everyone except the ones carrying guns or Tim either carried the food or a load of cocktails. Cassidy once again ordered the rest to stay as he sneaked forward to see how the situation looked outside. As a positive surprise only five of the zombies could be seen. The Irishman returned.

"I want you with the guns to take the point, shoot everything in your way. You with the cocktails go last and cover our escape. It's not too far to the stairs leading to the garage. The thing is that we don't know how many of them there is in the garage. My guess would be that most of them ran past and upstairs to get to us. And in the open space down there we can handle them. I think. Anyone not coming?" He said.

Everyone followed him to the entrance. The ghouls outside hadn't seen Cassidy when had peaked out for a look but as a group as big as this didn't go unnoticed. The five creatures outside ran up to the window and door and started banging. Mark gripped his shotgun tighter. As Cassidy yelled "Go" and fired at the two creatures blocking the door a chaotic moment erupted. The glass shattered and one of the two creatures dropped dead. The other one was hit in the shoulder and throat and a splatter of slimy blood flew through the air. Mark aimed his shotgun at another one and fired. The buckshot hit from the neck and upwards killing the beast. Jessica and Travis fired too and soon only the zombie that had been knocked to the ground remained. A three shot burst from Cassidy's rifle killed it. The whole group sprinted out of the shop and two Molotov cocktails were thrown to cover their escape as a group of flesh eaters charged. Between the stairs leading to the garage and the group there were three zombies now charging and flailing with their arms. Mark stopped for a second and fired at the closest. He didn't have time to aim at all but lucky as he was the shot impacted and shredded the zombies torso. It lost it's balance and started to twitch as some of the buckshot destroyed some useful bone inside the undead. Another burst from Cassidy's rifle and the last bullets in the clip stitched a pattern of big red holes from the zombies stomach to it's forehead. The last was taken care of by Jessica who also spent her last bullets taking the threat down. The group ran over to the stairs and down the stairs and entered the dark garage. No humanoid shapes could be seen at all, only big shapes of cars and a school bus. But it was a long way to them. Everyone sprinted towards the safety of the vehicles and Chris and Matt who carried Tim couldn't keep up. After them came the ghouls. At least a dozen of the ravenous flesh eaters were on their way down their stairs. Some of them burned a little and some had slightly charred features. Mark's leg was better now, but it still hurt as hell to run but somehow he managed to reach his and Alec's pickup and as Alec and Travis got in Mark dropped to his knees and aimed the shotgun towards the horde behind his friends. As he fired this time he had a little space left between his shoulder and the shotgun and as the recoil slammed back it was as if a professional boxer just jabbed him in the shoulder. A loud "Fuck" exited his lips. And the shot missed too. The next shot wasn't really a shot at all, the shotgun went click and after another loud "Fuck" he cursed himself for not reloading before they made their escape. He fumbled in his pocket for more shells but as he got them out of his pocket and into his hands the adrenaline was pumping so hard that he dropped them. He heard how the bus roared to life behind him. The trio only had a short way left to the cars but the zombies were closing in on them. Mark had to do something.

"Drop Tim or all three of you are dead!" He shouted to them and sadly he saw the look on Tim's face as he heard Mark's order.

Matt followed Mark's advice and just let go of Tim's arm and sprinted towards his own car. Chris on the other hand struggled even harder as he dragged Tim towards the cars. Mark could see how a zombie, appropriate enough wearing a tracksuit, closed in on them and who any second would reach them. He couldn't shoot it, the two boys were in his way. It reached them and grabbed Chris who swung it over his back in a move only reserved for wrestling. Unfortunately he tumbled to the ground with. The zombie and Chris got up equally fast and as it charged Chris swung his baseball bat with all his might. It was a glancing hit and the tracksuit zombies left eye and face caved inwards. But a new ghoul had reached Tim and taken another bite out of him. Mark fired and hit the creature in the shoulder. Finally Chris realised that there were no hope left for Tim and he ran with amazing speed towards Matt's car. Mark got in his own. As Alec was going to start it another equally loud curse was heard. Then he shouted:

"The keys!"

"Fuck!" Mark roared again even louder than before.

The zombies reached the closest car which happened to be the car Mark and the others were in. They started banging on the windows and broke the one at the drivers seat. This time it was Travis who saved the day. He leaned down towards the ignition and grunted "move over" to Alec who tried to not get dragged out of the car by the zombies. While Travis tried to hotwire the car and Alec tried to fight of a zombie that had a good grip of his hair Mark got up his shotgun and pumped it and put it against the forehead of the fiend that were holding Alec and pressed the trigger. The gunshot echoed even louder inside the car and the three people inside it, especially Alec was showered with gore. Cold, slimy and brownish blood and grey brain matter. This was too much to take for Alec and he did what any sane person would have done a long time ago. He threw up all over his friend Travis who just managed to hotwire the car. The pickup roared to life and Travis screamed as he realised what just happened. Alec recovered quickly and pressed the gas pedal and mowed down two or three undead on his way out of the carpark. Once again they were on the road, smelling of rotten gore and puke and with ears ringing.


	12. Note

People, some of you might have noticed that there hasn't been an update for quite a while. The reason is simply that I have been a little busy with stuff like a normal person would spend a summer doing. Mostly nothing and drinking. A while ago I started writing on the next chapter and managed to type down a couple of pages when the whole computer goes FUBAR overnight. I wont bore you with tech speak (mostly since I don't know what happened) but the laptop I used to write on is as stated before fubar. So I today I started writing on another computer and hopefully the update will be finished within days.


	13. Chapter 12 part one

_AN: I'm kinda sorry for not updating lately but as I've said before I've been busy. Here's the first part in a new chapter. The next will hopefully be up soon. _

Chapter 12 (first part):

The evening four days after the destruction of the mall two cars and a school bus rolled into a small town in one of the northern states. No one in the caravan cared which since states weren't as important as they had been once. The town looked like any other, a ghost town. Before the whole caravan entered town the standard tactic to lure the hordes of undead in the streets. Just before nightfall a pickup truck with three young men in it roared through the main streets of the town making as much noise as they could. It worked like a well oiled machine. Soon they had a horde containing hundreds or maybe even thousands of undead dressed in tattered rags on their tail. Ten miles out of town Alec pressed the pedal and left the legion of dead jogging after them and finally stopping as they couldn't see or hear the flesh in the pickup. By the time the three of them got back the sun was just about to dive down behind the horizon. It had been a nice day and without a cloud in the sky and now it turned into a star covered night sky.

The bus stopped in front of a building that once had served as a pawn shop with an apartment, probably the owners, above. It had all a safehouse needed, the windows and door on the first floor was barred shut with heavy steel bars. The bus dodged a stranded car and drove up on the sidewalk and the two other cars followed and stopped. The pickup was last in line. As soon as Alec killed the engine Alec, Mark and Travis, all dressed in military uniforms and with bandanas over their faces like robbers of the wild west. Cassidy, Chris and Jessica got out and sprinted towards the pawn shop. The door was luckily open and the three of them charged inside to secure the shop. Mark and Alec took position with their guns aimed at whatever the shadows could conceal. Travis got started with dragging two objects that looked like six feet cocoons wrapped in big black plastic bags out from the bed of the truck to the middle of the streets. A humanoid figure materialized itself from one of the shadows and with a hissing that only a rotting throat could make it charged towards Travis and the plastic cocoons. Two short metallic bangs coming from an M-16 were heard at the same time as a loud bark of a shotgun. The undead man almost fell down as at least one of the bullets hit him but kept sprinting towards Travis. Travis had noticed what was going on and raised his own shotgun, a small and stubby pump action one, and fired. The creatures was twenty feet away from him when he fired and buckshot impacted and crushed most of the creatures head.

"Get inside now, it's clear!" Cassidy shouted and broke the silence.

Without arguing and knowing that more zombies were sure to show up the three boys rushed inside. On their way in they joined up with the rest of the group who had been safely tucked away in their car until Cassidy had announced everything to be okay. Together they got inside the pawn shop. The walls were covered in so many things that Mark couldn't tell what color the walls actually had. Paintings, furniture in variated quality as well as clothes and old VHS movies. Mark was thrown back to reality as someone shut the door behind him with a loud bang and barred it. He turned around and saw that Matt for the first time in a long while was doing something useful. His first impression of the guy had lasted for this long and was in no way changing. No one said anything for almost a minute and during that time Mark's heart slowed down to an almost normal speed.

"Did you manage to get the bags?" Jessica asked Matt in an ice cold tone. It was obvious that she shared Mark's opinion on the guy. He nodded and put down a bag containing the little food they had been able to get with them when they left their last safehouse.

"Of course. What do you think of me?" Matt said with a self idolizing grin. Alec mumbled something that no one could hear and had been best if no one had.

"What did you just say?" Matt snapped at Alec.

"I said: You don't want to know that." Was the answer he got. Matt's facial expression changed.

"You should be glad that the mick took my gun away." He said and the tension in the room grew.

"Are you threatening me or did you just realize that you'd hurt yourself more than anyone else if you got a gun?"

"Fuck you. I can shoot."

"Yeah, a little at least. The thing is that you don't know when too. Last night you should have left that thing alone and we would have taken care of it when we were going to leave. But you didn't, you shot it and you attracted too much attention. If we had stayed a few minutes more we would have been swarmed." The Irishman interrupted. "If you two start this shit again I will kick you out and take your guns away." It was an order.

Matt grunted something and stormed upstairs flanked by his masculine girlfriend. A door slammed shut loud and the rest of the group started talking again.

"One more day and I'll kick that guy's ass. I swear." Alec said. A few of the others grunted agreeing to the statement.

"At least we know that your idea worked. The smell of their own really masks our own. As soon as they couldn't see us they simply stopped. Not like they did back at the mall."

"At least that's one good thing." Chris said. "Don't like the tone of Matt at all. We ought to keep an eye on him and two on the guns. All of them."

"Luckily for us most of them are down in the cars. Not even that dude is stupid enough to go down there." Alec said.

"We need food and water. This wont be enough for one meal to all of us." Maria said.

"Then I can go without dinner today. But that's not all we're low at. We need fuel too." Cassidy stated. "Who takes watch today? The stair leads past the apartment so there's probably entrance to the roof there. From there we could get pretty good overview and see anything that goes on around here."

"What are you afraid of? The zombies can't get in here, no way." Chris said.

"Yeah, but there might be other people here and they might want our cars and the stuff in them. That's what I'm most afraid of. If anyone spot someone who tries to get our cars you fire a warning shot, if he doesn't stop of fire back you shot to kill, understood?" Cassidy said in a cold calculating way that scared Mark.

"I can do that." Mark said and looked for someone else to join him.

"I'll sit with you. But dont' count on me shooting normal persons." Alec said after a moment of silence. Cassidy nodded.

"And the second watch?" Cassidy asked the rest of the group.

Deciding watch took a while. Not everyone was eager to be woken up in the middle of the night to sit on a cold roof and check for anything suspicious. Then they ate the little food they had. Before everything happened bottled water and canned goods like these wouldn't have been classed as food by anyone in the group. Matt didn't join them but his girl came down and fetched two rations. No one said a word to her. No one talked much while they ate anyway. The loss of everyone in the mall still clinged on as much as an hour after it had happened. The one who it had hit hardest was Jessica since she had lost both cousin and father, people who had been with her before and after the end of the world. When the eating was done the ones who weren't up for watch found a place to sleep in. Mark and Alec made their way up to the roof with the equipment they would need for their two hour long watch. Two chairs and four rifles. They sat down without saying anything to each other. Mark looked at himself and then at Alec. Both of them wore combat boots and camo pants. Mark had a his leather jacked and Alec wore an olive green bomber jacket he had found in the bus after the raid on the gun store. Mark had a holster in his belt with an Colt 1911 in it and Alec's shoulder holster carried one of the glocks. He put his shotgun down over his lap and leaned his second rifle, a standard AK-47 assault rifle on the back of his chair. Alec had both his rifles leaned to the chair. Mark felt as if he had to break the silence.

"Look at us. We're sitting here like two real fucking soldiers." He told his friend.

"Yeah. How did we get here?" Alec answered.

"I honestly don't know. It doesn't feel like we had much of a choice, we just followed and whoever told us to follow."

"Yeah. First Morgan and Jimmy and then Steve and now Cassidy. I wonder what we will be like in five years."

"Either we're dead, everything has sorted itself out and is back to normal or we're gonna be two Mad Max dudes road tripping through the continent. Without the leather of course."

"You'll have leather, I'll bet. You'll be the big S/M overlord badguy."

"Maybe, if so I'm gonna make you my bitch." Mark snapped back before laughing with his friend.

"First of, this conversation is getting way to gay and second, the whole bitch post would be taken by Jessica wouldn't it?"

"You know what. If we weren't on this very important guard duty I would kick your ass like back in the days. And yes, the conversation is getting a little fruity."

"Just don't say I didn't know what was gonna happen." Alec ended the joking session. They sat quiet in the darkness of the dead town for a few minutes before Mark broke the silence again.

"Do you think about Stan and Kyle a lot?" He asked.

"Every day. Do you?"

"I haven't the last few days and that scares me. Now when I do think about them I really miss them. But when I think about them I also remember that we put them down like animals."

For a few moments Alec didn't know what to say since Mark's statement killed the good way of remembering their dead friends and replaced it with a sort of cruel cynical coldness of what they did once their friends got infected. After a while Alec came up with an answer.

"Yeah we did." He said slowly. "But isn't that better than to have them walk around as rotten zombies?"

"Yeah it is. I wouldn't want to turn out like that."

They didn't say much more for the rest of the shift. After two hours they went downstairs to get two others without nothing strange to report. It didn't take long before Mark entered a much better world from which he didn't remember anything of the next morning. Alec on the other hand didn't sleep at all.

The first thing Mark realized as he woke up was that it was raining heavy. Everyone else was getting up as well except for Cassidy and Travis who had been on the last watch. After a few minutes when everyone was awake Cassidy started speaking.

"Sadly there's no breakfast today. No food at all today. Only two bottles of water if you're thirsty. I think the town is pretty deserted since yesterday. It should be pretty easy to go out but the problem is that we'll have to cary it all. And for that we need everyone. This time I'm not asking for volunteers, everyone goes. Another problem is that we don't know where there's any shops."

"That's not a problem, I saw a Wall mart when we drove through the town last night. I don't think it's too far." Alec said.

"Good." Cassidy said. "Get your stuff ready. We're going out."


	14. Chapter 14

First off, I'm not dead. Second, I'm gonna start writing again. But since BNW has gone from bad to worse I'm gonna start rewriting it. Adding a couple of characters, taking some away and changing the story a little. And change the runners to shamblers. It's better that way. Just give me a couple of days and I'll be finished with the first chapter. Cheers.


End file.
